Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

2009-11-12T07:48:00.001-06:00

What Makes Us Who We Really Are
Here's a favorite quote from J.K. Rowling:

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"

The story has repeated itself so many times. A promising athlete, entertainer, or governmental leader looks like a cinch for greatness. They have all the talent and charisma to succeed.

Then they implode. They get within inches of what they worked for only to lose it all when bad choices that they make -- horrible choices -- destroy everything.

But wait! There's another side to the story, too.

After all, we've also seen an almost equal number of stories where someone whose position or resources should have resulted in disaster overcame impossible obstacles to do great things.

What's the common thread in these stories? Choices. In each of those stories, the choices the people made ultimately determined their outcome.

It was choices to risk everything for nothing that has destroyed the dreams of people who had everything going for them. And it was choices to persevere despite overwhelming odds that made dreams come true for those who should have had no hope.

It's not luck. It's choices.

Choices play a bigger role than talent. They play a bigger role than resources. They play a bigger role than whatever initial advantage or disadvantage someone might have.

The choices we make show what we really are. What kind of choices are you making today?
Jeff

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2009-11-05T09:38:00.000-06:00

Making Decisions Means Abandoning Options
Here's a favorite quote from Paul Myers:

"Does this move me closer to what I want, faster than whatever else I could be doing?"

As business owners, a world of options stare us in the face every day. "How can I best promote this product?" Well, there are dozens of excellent options. "Which course of action should I pursue to get where I want to go?" Again, dozens, if not hundreds of ways face us.

That sheer number of options sometimes holds us back, doesn't it? They call it analysis paralysis. And it's magnified by the nagging fear that whichever option we choose MIGHT not be the absolute best option.

The reality is that we don't need to look for the perfect option, the option that will get us past whatever unseen obstacles we might encounter along the way. Nor do we need to stew over how we're going to carry out all the options that lay before us at once.

All we have to do is choose one option, based on what we can see, not on what we can't.

Choose what looks like it will take you where you want to go the fastest. Not sure precisely which one that is? Then choose one of those that came in tied for first, run with it, and don't look back at the others.

Whether it indeed was the best or not, it will still get you farther ahead faster than you would get by sitting around wondering.
Jeff

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2009-11-03T21:17:00.002-06:00

New Website Directory Submission List: Which Are Worth Submitting To?
Are you using website directories as a source of incoming links? You remember website directories, don't you? Those are those quaint little things that people used to search for the information they wanted back before Google gobbled up the Internet.

They're still around, and they're still authoritative sources of inbound links. Many of them now are paid, but some of them are still free. I just posted a new article assessing which web directories are the best to submit your website to. Check out this website directory submission list here.
Jeff

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2009-10-08T07:36:00.001-05:00

Are You Taking that Most Important First Step?
Here's a favorite quote from J. Pierpont Morgan:

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to to decide that you are not going to stay where you are."

Obvious, but insightful. How many times have you daydreamed about taking your life somewhere else, somewhere better, only to find that you got stuck -- because getting wherever you wanted to be meant that you couldn't stay right where you were?

Parting with where you are doesn't mean simply parting with that place's unpleasant aspects. It also means parting ways with that familiar old security blanket we wrap ourselves inside.

It means exposing ourselves to the unfamiliar and growing beyond what we now are. The only way to have a better future is to be willing to give up the comfortable security of a stagnant now.

There is no gain without risk.

Only those who take the risk stand a chance of gaining the reward.

Here's hoping you make the decision to pursue that journey to the "somewhere" you envision -- despite the cost.
Jeff

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2009-10-01T09:14:00.002-05:00

What to Do with Obstacles
Here's a favorite quote from Michael Jordan:

"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."

It's easy to wish that obstacles would just go away. They're inconvenient. They're troublesome. Life would be so much easier if we didn't have to deal with them.

They are also, though, the key to success. Nobody ever succeeded without enduring obstacles. Those obstacles, in fact, provides the fuel that gets us where we wanted to go.

Without obstacles, we would never do anything more than meander toward some vague goal. Obstacles force us to focus our attention on the key lessons we have to learn in order to succeed. That focus helps us set a straight path toward goals and resources we might never have even identified without their help.

Michael Jordan truly epitomized this quote. When I think back on seeing him play, he was a man who found ways to overcome whatever obstacles lay between him and victory.

Certainly, he had developed an unusual degree of perseverance and tenacity over his lifetime. But that doesn't mean you can't do the same.

Treat your obstacles as a challenge rather than as a dead-end. Learn from them. Develop perseverance from them.

You'll find them to be surprisingly helpful.
Jeff

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2009-09-24T06:28:00.000-05:00

The Best Kind of Good Luck to Have
Here's a favorite quote from Channing Pollock:

"The only good luck many great men ever had was being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck."

It's easy to sit back and look at those who have obtained what we want with envy. "If only I had had their advantages! If only I hadn't been cursed with bad luck!"

Bad luck? It's a crutch we use to explain why we haven't accomplished what others have.

Yes, some of us have had starts that put us at a disadvantage. Some of us have faced setbacks that were crushing in nature.

The fact is, though, that MANY OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE ACCOMPLISHED GREAT THINGS HAVE FACED THE SAME THINGS WE HAVE. Some of them have faced even worse.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not pointing fingers and saying, "The only reason you don't have everything you want is because you're flawed."

Hey, we're all flawed. I'm flawed. You're flawed. People who have succeeded dramatically are flawed.

What's the difference, then, between them and us? It's in them working hard to overcome whatever bad luck beset them instead of hunkering down and beamoaning it.

The wonderful news about this is that opportunity is open not just to them. It's open also to each of us.

So what are you going to do about whatever "bad luck" has been holding you back?
Jeff

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2009-09-17T06:35:00.003-05:00

The Will to Excel
Here's a favorite quote from Vince Lombardi:

"The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur."

What is it that leads to success? It's not luck. It's not events falling perfectly into place. It is determination and persistence.

I've admired Vince Lombardi since childhood. Rarely have I seen a person with greater will to succeed than Lombardi -- a will that he put into action by doing whatever was necessary to reach the goals he envisioned.

His demand for excellence was legendary -- both the excellence he expected of his players and the excellence he expected of himself. No, there was no sitting back and waiting for the right moment. He didn't wait for luck. He made his own luck by hard work and sacrifice.

He's someone I always strive to be more like in my business. He's a good model for any business owner.

Focus on your vision for how you can use your business to make a better world for yourself and for others. Then pursue that vision tenaciously. It's a much surer way of getting to your goals than any other way I know.
Jeff

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2009-09-10T08:11:00.000-05:00

The Role of Adversity
Here's a favorite quote from Lou Holtz:

"Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity."

Why do people (including me, at times) look for some magic wand that will bend everything around them to providing them with an effort-free life? We buy into the fantasy that life is supposed to be easy and that the path to finding that easy life boils down to one little secret that unlocks the door -- without us having to exert any effort to attain it.

I've learned differently. I've come to the conclusion that the way we learn is through adversity.

When I was studying theatrical lighting in college, my professor and mentor told me a story of a lesson he once taught some other lighting students. They were doing lights for a suspenseful play in which one crucial scene involved one of the characters struggling to find and turn on a lamp in a darkened room.

The professor looked over their plans. One thing caught his eye.

"I notice here that you're plugging the lamp direction into a live outlet on the stage. Why didn't you connect it to the same circuit as the stage lights that will come on when the lamp goes on?"

Their eyes lit up. "We figured it would be much simpler that way than running all the extra cabling to do it the way you suggested."

"But how are you going to control it so the lamp and the lights come on at the same time?" he asked.

"Oh, that'll be no problem. We'll simply turn up the lights the same instant the actor turns on the lamp. There's really no reason to go to all that extra work of running all that cable."

He was about to tell them to do it the way he had told them, but they seemed so proud of themselves for figuring out a better way of doing it than "the old man" had told them, that he decided to let them see for themselves.

As they got into the dress rehearsals, they had no end of trouble trying to sync up the actor onstage turning on the lamp and them in the booth turning up the lighting. Either the single light bulb went on first, followed by the stage growing lighter a second later, or the stage grew lighter a couple of seconds before the light bulb went on.

They tried all manner of plans to ensure the lights went on a precisely the same time, but nothing worked. Finally, they decided to run the necessary cable so they could control the lamp from the booth, along with the other lights.

Afterwards, they came to the professor and asked why he hadn't insisted they do it his way. "If I had," he said, "you would have figured I was just set in my ways. The next time you got the chance, you'd do it your way. Maybe then you'd be on a tighter schedule and wouldn't have time to fix your mistake. This way, you'll never even consider making that mistake ever again."

We learn most clearly from our mistakes. That's why it's a mistake to look for a path that promises us an easy, obstacle-free way to success.

We actually need obstacles in order to succeed. We need mistakes in order to learn.

It's been said time and again that they way for us to succeed is not for us to wait until we have every potential problem solved so we can proceed, obstacle-free. That situation never occurs.

The solution is to take action, encounter whatever problems we're going to encounter, learn from them, and move forward from there. That's the realistic route to success.
Jeff

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2009-09-03T10:25:00.001-05:00

What Goes into Achievement
Here's a favorite quote from Jack Nicklaus:

"Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's levels of aspiration and expectation."

I used to look at success as a destination. I used to expect that there would be some big moment when suddenly I realized, "I made it!"

I don't look at it that way any more. I've come to see it more like Jack Nicklaus said: steadily raising my level of aspiration and expectation.

Success is a gradual journey. You don't arrive there. You journey through there in an ongoing journey of life. The more you achieve, the higher you raise your goals.

I don't think, though, that raising our aspirations is even the key to success. I think the key is the expectation part.

It's not enough to WANT more. It's when you recognize that you can bring those higher goals into reality by what you do that you really start to achieve success.

Waiting for success to come to you doesn't work. You have to work for it. You take those goals that you want and figure out how to bring them about. And once you start seeing that you can do that, it becomes that much easier.

Rather than trusting to luck or fate or whatever, you see that you can take the next step, and the next one, and the next one, in bringing those goals about.

Take that journey, even if you don't feel you're quite ready for it. Take that journey and discover what you can come to expect from yourself. Take that journey and discover that you're finding success long before you reach any destination.
Jeff

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2009-08-27T10:02:00.002-05:00

Resources, or Resourcefulness?
Here's a favorite quote from Dan Kennedy:

"Success is all about resourcefulness, not waiting until you have resources."

This one really hits home with me.

I've struggled with this one for many years. It's tempting to put business starting in a perpetual "wait" mode.

We look at ourselves and see our own faults. We're painfully aware of what we don't know yet.

We figure that if we just wait a little longer, we'll have a chance to overcome those weaknesses. We'll have a chance to learn what we don't yet know.

Maybe we'll even stumble upon THE ANSWER that will release our business from having to depend on our imperfect abilities. Maybe that ANSWER will cause our business to succeed despite us instead of having succeed because of us.

This doesn't happen. There is no ANSWER.

Our businesses succeed or fail based on what we do, not on what we hope will happen on its own. Scary, huh?

That's why it's better not to wait for that perfect answer. As Dan Kennedy wisely reminds us, it's our resourcefulness, about ability to find answers on our own even when no ANSWER materializes outside of us, that will ultimately be the deciding factor in our business.

Don't wait! Get moving! Be willing to learn as you go instead waiting futilely for some time that never comes when you finally have all the resources you need to ensure your success. The only way you'll ever have all the resources you need is if you build them as you go.
Jeff

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2009-08-22T20:49:00.003-05:00

Where Do I Start Getting Traffic?
I got a question today that struck me as a good one to share with others. It's a common position that many new business owners have. It's one of "Help, I have a business but I don't know how to get customers."

Since the questioner seemed to be pretty much at ground zero in his business, that's where I answered it from. Hope it helps

"This may sound like a cop-out, but the best place to market what you have to offer is to go where the people who are most likely to want it are.

"What problem does what you're selling solve for people? Figure that out and you can start narrowing down where to find them.

"Oh, and saying, "Well, everybody could probably use what I'm selling." Figure out who would benefit from it most and then start looking for places that they would go looking for answers.

"Craigslist is good for selling physical products, but it has its limitations for things that are less tangible. And it limits you severely when it comes to where on the site you can post your ad. But I've had success with some things on there.

"For physical products, eBay can be a good way to start. You have plenty of traffic coming there looking for solutions. That means you don't have to go look for them. It's cheap to set up, your risk is a lot lower than going out and buying advertising for a website. I have a few tips for auction selling on my website if you're interested: http://www.onestopwebsupport.com/dir-auctions.htm

"If you have a website already and are looking for ways to drive traffic to it for free, you might also want to look at forums. Find the forums that people who are most likely to be interested in your solutions are looking for answers. Don't go in there spamming the threads with nothing but "Buy my stuff!"

"Be genuinely helpful to people. Answer their questions, even if they don't apply to your solutions. When you get a question where your product is related to the question, drop in a link to your site with a comment that they might find what you have there useful. Be careful, though, that you don't violate any forum terms of service about links. Check that out before you start posting on a forum.

"If you build a reputation on the forums for being helpful (and not just pushing your product). You'll start getting traffic from there. No, it's not going to send you millions of visitors a day. And it will take some effort on your part. But once you start getting income, you can start reinvesting it back into your business with strategies that cost a little.

"Business never works as a big explosion -- from no income to riches immediately. It's a matter of building momentum, slowly at first, but if you keep building it steadily, it will eventually become an avalanche."
Jeff

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2009-08-20T08:42:00.003-05:00

Are You Building the Right Traps?
Here's a favorite quote from Gil Bailie:

"No lions are ever caught in mousetraps. To catch lions you must think in terms of lions, not in terms of mice. Your mind is always creating traps of one kind or another, and what you catch depends on the thinking you do. It is your thinking that attracts to you what you receive."

It's easy to think too small. Oh, sure, we all have big dreams of what we WISH we could accomplish. But we find those dreams challenging and never get around to WORKING for them.

What work we do toward them is usually on a pretty small scale. We may set out to build financial security for ourselves, but we content ourselves working toward something that, at best, will bring us a little extra side income.

It's easier to build a mousetrap than a lion trap. It takes more time, more effort, more materials to catch lions.

If we never venture beyond the easy little things on which we focus our time, though, we never accomplish the big ones.

That's where I find myself right now. I've been in Internet marketing for over seven years now. I've made enough to pay the bills regularly -- until the recession hit and I experienced some major bumps in revenues.

I was satisfied with getting by. Now, simply getting by was never the big dream I started my business to accomplish. That dream was much broader, much wider, much grander.

Along the way, though, I became willing to settle for trapping mice instead of lions. I'm back to where I was before the recession. I'm getting by well enough.

But I'm a bit shaken by how vulnerable "just getting by" can make me. The dreams of something grander are still there, and perhaps more tangible than ever. I'm far better equipped to reach those dreams now than I was when I first started.

I'm going to have to focus, though, on building bigger than I have in the past. As I consider how to build beyond my present position, I see many things I'll have to do that I have never done before.

In many ways, I'll need to abandon the familiarity of my present business and build it in new and different directions. It seems like every direction I turn, I find something new and unfamiliar facing me, challenging me to master it.

That's all part of what Bailie is saying, though. The bigger and more dangerous the dreams you're trying to catch, the more effort it will take to pursue them.

Where are you right now in pursuing the big dreams that started you on your present journey? Are you still pursuing the lions? Or have you settled for simply catching mice?
Jeff

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2009-08-18T18:43:00.002-05:00

A New Blog
I've been experimenting, the past month with something a little different. I've set up my first WordPress blog for Marketing Secrets Decoded, on which I'll focus specifically on Internet marketing strategies.

I'll also be opening that one up to some specially invited guest bloggers. I've worked with Blogger for five years now, but it's time to also familiarize myself with "the competition."

So check it out for some more of my marketing tips, as well as tips from other marketing writers.
Jeff

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2009-08-15T08:08:00.001-05:00

A New Focus for My Newsletter
I haven't said much about my newsletter over the last few months. It hasn't gone away, though.

On the contrary, it has turned in some exciting new directions. After a brief experiment with running short series of more in-depth explorations of various topics, subscribers encouraged me to do more of the same.

I'm currently expanding some of my previous series to sell on Amazon. And, as I do so, I am focusing my current newsletter on writing two long-term series, chosen by subscribers to meet their current needs. These, too, I plan to work into book form for Amazon when they conclude.

Until then, my subscribers are serving as beta testers, so to speak, of these upcoming books. Because of that, I no longer offer access to my archives to the public. (I certainly can't sell on Amazon what people can access for free on my site!) The only way to see these series (before you have to pay for them) is by subscribing to my weekly newsletter.

You can do this on the following page: http://www.OneStopWebSupport.com/newsletter-signup.htm.

Right now, the two books I'm previewing in this manner are:

An in-depth exploration of how to build an opt-in list and market to them profitably
Profitable strategies for marketing your service business

Want to get in on this sneak-peek preview? Come, be one of the select few to preview these future books!
Jeff

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2009-08-13T08:54:00.000-05:00

Are You Being Persistent in the Right Things?
Here's a favorite quote from Friedrich Nietzsche:

"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal"

All of us are capable of great persistence. The problem is that we often choose the wrong things to be persistent about. We set our minds about a certain way of doing things and then set about doing them in the most ineffective way possible.

The other day, I took my wife and son out to one of his favorite restaurants before he left from his brief stay home between ending his time in the Marines and heading back to college. The restaurant had two locations, on opposite ends of the metro area.

We went to the closer one and found that their computer was down. They could accept only cash. I immediately turned us around and had us set off for the other location, all the way across town.

Why? Because I've been trying to track my spending more precisely and have found it helpful to put certain categories on spending on my check card. That way I can see those expenditures all in one handy report each month.

I could have easily gone one block, gotten approximately as much cash out as I expected to pay for the meal, and listed the withdrawal as Dining. But, instead, I drove them nearly 20 miles (surprisingly without complaint from either of them) just to go to the other restaurant that would accept plastic.

I have to say, this is not the first time I have been this persistently inefficient in pursuing a course of action instead of the goal behind it. I've held onto unprofitable business strategies for too long because I fell in love with them. I've continued to pursue failed opportunities long after I should have abandoned them.

Examples of being persistent about courses of action rather than the end results are many in my life, as I suspect they are in just about anyone. We get emotionally attached to the means and forget about the ends.

I invite you today to take a look at your business and life right now. Are you pursuing your goals? Or just the path you hope will take you there?
Jeff

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2009-08-10T16:29:00.004-05:00

Paying Attention to the Short-Term, Too
You've heard it many times. "Forget the short term. Focus on your long term plans." It's important advice, but it can also be misleading.

Granted, if you ignore your long-term goals, you'll never get where you want to go. But if you put all your energy into working toward the distant future, you'll never get started toward it.

I'm very much guilty of this. I can't look at my business goals without seeing all the elements of what they could grow into in their full-fledged form.

The problem is, though, is that it's never possible to go right to that full-fledged form. It takes time to build there.

So I've often fallen into a pattern of putting all my energy into building for the future. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in my post about building castles instead of bridges.

One of the problems with that approach, though, is that it becomes very easy to neglect the present. That sometimes puts me into a cash-flow bind. I work determinedly toward long-term profits and suddenly find that my current cash flow is sluggish.

So, for the past couple of weeks, I've forced myself to spend time on quick cash-generating ideas as well as long-term goals. The results have been outstanding!

Not only did I have a sudden burst of income to finish up one of my best July's ever, but I did it without compromising future goals. I identified ways I could fit some of the short-term cash generation into my long term goals and build immediate assets as well as long-term ones.

The result of it all has been more peace of mind (no unexpected cash-flow problems) and, actually, additional progress toward my long-term goals. I encourage you to look at the way you've pursued your goals. Are you focusing too much on either long-term thinking or short-term thinking?

Look for ways to balance them both and make them work together. I've found a balanced approach to be far more effective.
Jeff

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2009-08-08T22:42:00.003-05:00

All Sorts of Value on the Hot Offers Page!
You may have noticed I've been kind of quiet about my Hot Offers page lately. It's not that I haven't been updating it. It's just that I haven't been terribly excited about the quality of the deals that I've been hearing about lately.

That has changed drastically this past week. Maybe it's a signal of people coming out the recession. Maybe not. But I've been unearthing all sorts of real bargains this week.

If you're into AdWords or pay-per-click marketing in general, I've found two offers for you:

17 Free Adwords cheatsheets MP3s and more from one of the premier authorities on AdWords and one of the most brilliant men I know
A chance to try out a SUITE of killer AdWords tools for only $1

And AdWords isn't the only place I'm finding some great values this week.

A key component of a $297 article writing software is being spun off as a standalone product. Instead of charging $67, $97, or even more for this tool that drops into your lap all the research you need to write powerful, authoritative articles, they're GIVING IT AWAY for FREE.

Can't beat that price, can you? So if you've been putting off writing articles because you hate to write, this will make writing 100 times easier for you -- and won't cost you a cent.

There's a $97 keywords research webinar that's available for free. And two offers for business-building training, each for under $5.

In all, there's a lot of value on the Hot Offers page right now and nothing goes for over $3.95.

So I invite you to check out these hot offers while they're still available.
Jeff

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2009-08-06T12:43:00.000-05:00

Stretching Your Way to Success
Here's a favorite quote from C.S. Lewis:

"Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither"

In the post I did a couple of days ago, I expanded on an excellent post I had read on another blog. One thing I didn't mention, though, was that the first comment made about that blog was a rather skeptical one.

The topic was about ensuring that whatever you presented to potential customers had great value in it. It broke down the different aspects of giving value and what you could accomplish by it in the long run.

That comment that stuck in my mind, though, heaped a healthy dose of skepticism on the whole subject. The person said something along the lines of, "Yeah, sure, but I can't see just giving and giving and giving away everything for free and then crossing my fingers and hoping that something good comes out of it."

That's the way that many business owners look at it. "Giving is bad; getting is good. If I can get with as little giving as possible, I've won and they've lost."

Marketing is not a zero-sum game, though, any more than Lewis viewed faith -- and God. Our world is set up -- created, if I may use that term in this context -- as something where the more you focus strictly on getting for yourself, the more you lose out on what you could have gotten.

It's a paradox, but I've seen it over and over again. Sure, those who focus strictly on what they get may seem to be ahead for a time. But in the end, they always lose. And those who focus the most firmly on themselves, lose the biggest.

It may engender skepticism from some, but giving value is indeed the best route to getting -- many times getting far more than you could have imagined -- sometimes in surprising ways.
Jeff

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2009-08-04T12:35:00.002-05:00

The Exchange of Value
I read an excellent post today about one of my favorite subjects, value. It got me thinking about the subject from some different angles, so I thought I'd share my response to it with you.

Marketing is not about coercing unwitting dupes to give you their money. Marketing is about solving people's problems.

Many business owners approach the exchange of value with the viewpoint of, "I've got a whole bunch of stuff that is absolutely worthless to me. I can't buy groceries with it; I can't pay the mortgage with it. I've got way too much of it and I need to get rid of it! What do I need to do to get rid of all this stuff and get people to give me more money than it's worth to me?"

If you walked into a store and someone said that to you, would you want to buy from them? Not a chance! You'd go flying out the door to find someone who isn't trying to rip you off.

When you look at it, though, from the perspective of your potential buyer's needs, you see a far different picture. They have a pressing need that you have a solution for. It's worth far more to them than it is to you. Focus on the value it has to them rather than on your eagerness to get rid of it and you'll get far more than it's worth to you while they feel they're getting a real bargain.

There's a lot more to it than just giving random stuff away and hoping you eventually make something out of your generosity. It's a matter of infusing what you give them with as much value as you possibly can so they're eager to do exchange their money for the value you offer.

Business transactions exist only when both sides feel they got more value than they're giving up.
Jeff

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2009-07-30T07:42:00.001-05:00

Stretching Your Way to Success
Here's a favorite quote from Tom Hopkins:

"You cannot rest until you set goals that make you stretch"

We all want to get somewhere better than where we're at. We never get there, though, if we refuse to move.

Getting from where we don't want to be to where we want to be requires us to stretch. It requires us to move beyond our comfort zone.

Change requires risk. It may require trying things that are unfamiliar, trusting things that seem mysterious, stretching ourselves beyond where we'd really like to go.

In one sense, it's a paradox; to get where you want to go, you have to go where you'd rather not. In another sense, it's so obvious as to inspire a giant "Duh;" you can't get where you want to go, if you stay exactly where you are.

Take your choice. Then stretch yourself.
Jeff

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2009-07-28T07:32:00.001-05:00

Are You Building Castles or Bridges?
My marketing career has always focused on building castles. What I mean by that is that I've always focused on adding things to make the business structures I build bigger and more impressive.

Creating new content that I add to the various sites that I do for myself and for my clients. Adding new and better products. Always expanding what I've already built. Always building new structures, new sites, new e-stores.

I build castles. Always bigger, always better.

Some of my business friends tease me that I'm a regular content-generating machine. They marvel at the amount and quality of new content I generate while they struggle to generate a fraction of what I do.

Building castles all the time leads to a problem, though.

The problems with building castles
If you spend all your time inside the castle, building it taller and stronger and more impressive, you easily lose sight of a key element that negates the whole purpose of those castles -- the bridges and roads that enable the people who come to those castles for shelter to get inside them.

The online properties you build are purposeless unless the people who need them can get inside of them. Those castles are designed to be places where they can find solutions to the problems they face outside of them.

They face problems. Your castle holds the solution. Maybe their problem is a loss of income and your solution is a means of regaining some of it. Maybe their problem is worn out furniture and your solution is new furniture that really fits their lifestyle. Maybe their problem is aching joints and your solution is an effective pain-relief cream.

Inside your castle, they find relief from their problem.

The problem is when you focus too much on adding more to your castle and too little on finding the people who need the shelter you provide in it. I've had other business friends after me lately to make my "castles" more accessible to those who need the shelter those castle provide.

People don't just go roaming the countryside trying to break into random castles in the hope that they'll find what they need there. You have to build doors and bridges to let them in.

Actually, you need to do even more than that. If they aren't milling around right outside your walls, you need to build roads to get them from where they are to where you are.

It's called marketing.

By no means am I the only one guilty of this neglect of doors and bridges and roads. I see a lot of business owners who take great pride in building their online business structures -- so much pride that they, too, never venture outside of them.

It's not only the clients who find safety and security in the castles we build. We find it safe and warm and comfortable in them, too.

Outside those walls, we have no idea what surprises lurk. Staying inside the castle where WE control every detail feels comfortable and safe. But if we don't venture out and build those bridges, we deprive those for whom we built those castles in the first place the shelter that we built them to provide.

I know I will be putting a larger portion of my focus on venturing outside my castles and building those bridges and roads. Anything less and I let people down. I hope to see you all out there doing the same.

Happy bridge building!
Jeff

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2009-07-26T16:01:00.003-05:00

RANT: I Guess I'm Now a Bad, Bad Man
As I talked to a client last week, he casually passed on to me a complaint he had gotten from one of his resellers. I provide marketing tips to his resellers. Most of them have absolutely no experience with running a business. I provide them with free training on the basics of starting a business, as a service to this client.

I charge these resellers nothing for this. They get every bit of it for free.

The reseller had complained because he had found AN AFFILIATE LINK (gasp!) in something I had written. He was outraged because, as he said, "I just want to make money selling your stuff; I don't want you trying to make money off of me."

A majority of the tips I offer this client's resellers tell them how to start and grow their business without having to buy any of the costly tools that many marketers try to sell them.

I let them know that I have a more in-depth, paid training program available if they want that kind of extra training. And if I tell them about something that would get them where they want to go with their business faster than they could by doing it the free way, I suggest it as an option.

And, if that tool offers affiliate commissions to referrers, I direct them through my affiliate link.

But I'm not one of these guys who send out pitch after pitch screaming, "Your business is DOOMED if you don't buy my latest pitch-of-the-day."

So, there you have it. I'm a bad, bad man. I presented a potential solution to someone who might find that solution helpful. That makes me (gasp!) a MARKETER!

The myth of ivory-tower marketing
I have to chuckle at prospective business owners who figure that business can be done from an ivory tower. He HAS A PRODUCT. That means that people are supposed to come running to him to throw money at him.

Nobody's supposed to suggest anything to him that could help him reach his potential customers more effectively -- unless they're willing to do it all for him FOR FREE.

I feel sorry for guys like him who think the world is under obligation to throw money at him just because he started a business. I feel sorry for guys like him who feel that business is a one-way street. I feel sorry for guys like him who are so caught up in fear, that they see any recommendation that involves any effort or expense as a personal insult.

A different way to view the marketing you see
Because there's a different way of viewing the marketing that you encounter than as a personal insult. You can see it as part of learning how to market better yourself.

Look at the marketing you see around you every day. If something feels like it misses the mark with you, ask yourself why. What about it left you feeling like it wasn't for you? What would the solution that was offered have needed to make it useful to you? Was the product or service offered not something that you needed? Was the approach poorly done?

Rather than send an outraged email to his supplier complaining that they were recommending he buy something he didn't want, he could have used it to start learning about effective marketing.

I doubt, though, that he has any interest in learning anything about marketing effectively. He probably sees himself as being too high and mighty to dirty himself with any form of marketing. After all, isn't it the world's responsibility to reward him richly simply for saying, "I have things for you to buy?"

I give him about six months before he folds his failed business and blames the world for not doing "what they were supposed to" and buying his product. I give him six months before he complains that the stories of making money with an online business is nothing but lies because he didn't get rich at it. I give him six months before he finds another "get rich quick" scheme that gives him even less chance to actually make money.

He turned his nose up at literally thousands of dollars of free business-building advice that I've provided this client's resellers -- all because he felt it was his right never to be exposed to any recommendations that might not be free.

That's sad.
Jeff

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2009-07-25T10:57:00.002-05:00

Are You Taking Advantage of Your Uniqueness in Your Business?
When my kids were young, I had to chuckle at their desire to conform to being different. I can't tell you how many times I've heard kids say, "I'm weird," as a badge of honor.

As kids, we aspire to be unique. But when we enter the business world, we tend to lose that.

We feel that if we don't fit in to the professional "norm" we'll fall behind everybody else. So our promotion becomes stilted and formal. We try to impress them with how "professional" we are.

It's crazy! Will people look at our formal, "businesslike" presentations and say, "Oooh! That person must be really smart! I want to do business with them!"

Of course not! But, having that nagging inner fear that if people really see us in our business, they'll reject us, we try to appear as something we mistakenly believe will impress others.

Someone told me once of a Realtor who has taken the opposite approach. She calls herself "The Pet Lover's Realtor."

Every picture of herself in her advertising shows her with her dog. She advertises in local pet magazines and newsletters. She takes out ads in the PET section of of her newspaper's classified section. She's in the local parenting magazines, always with her dog.

Guess which Realtor is the biggest seller in that city. That's right: "The Pet Lover's Realtor."

Rather than hiding behind some mask of professionalism, she embraces who she is, what she loves. And like-minded people flock to her to do business with her.

Take some time to look at yourself, who you are, what makes you unique. Look for ways to use it in your marketing. Let people see the real person behind the business. You might be surprised what it can do.

2009-07-23T08:11:00.001-05:00

The Way to Put Obstacles Out of Sight
Here's a favorite quote from Henry Ford:

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal"

When I was fresh out of college, I took a job selling encyclopedias to make a little money before starting grad school. I was not a smashing success.

Each morning I would come into the main office and get a lot of laughs as I related my latest horror stories of the previous day's disastrous sales calls. Eventually, though, the other sales reps stopped laughing.

Eventually, they recognized that I was subconsciously starting to look for obstacles in my sales calls because I found it easier to get positive social reinforcement (laughter) for my failures than it was to improve my sales skills enough to get positive monetary reinforcement (sales).

When I lost focus on my goals, all I could see were the obstacles.

That's the lesson I see in Henry Ford's quote. And I see that situation a lot in many new business owners.

It's easy to get caught up in obstacles when you don't focus clearly on your goal. It's easy to complain about what stands in your way and believe that if it weren't for those obstacles, you'd have a clear path to your goals.

But those obstacles are like billboards alongside the road. If you focus on the road, the road will eventually take you past them. If you focus on them, you'll lose sight of the road and eventually run right off of it.

That's the way your obstacles stop you -- when you pay attention to THEM instead of the road to your destination. You can probably get sympathy from friends and family when you complain of those obstacles, but is sympathy really what you started your endeavor to achieve?

Keep focusing on your goals, not the obstacles. The obstacles are only the billboards along the way.
Jeff

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2009-07-18T15:48:00.004-05:00

The Difference Between Perfectionism and the Pursuit of Excellence
I, along with many other business owners, frequently suffer from perfectionism. I hesitate to tackle important projects because I can't guarantee up front that I will carry them off perfectly.

I keep telling myself the old encouragement, "It's more important to get it going than it is to get it perfect," to remind myself that I can always tweak and improve something once it's created, even if it isn't perfect right out of the gate.

As a perfectionist, I tell myself that I'm seeking excellence. The other day, though, someone shared with me the differences he saw between excellence and perfectionism.

They really are complete opposites. What he said really struck a chord with me and inspired me to identify some more differences between perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence:

PERFECTIONISM is the fear of being wrong.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is the willingness to be wrong and to learn from it.
PERFECTIONISM is seeing any effort that doesn't turn out exactly as planned as failure.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is seeing any effort that doesn't turn out exactly as planned as a valuable opportunity to refine the plan and make it better.
PERFECTIONISM is fear that others might think you don't measure up.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is a desire to be the best you can be.
PERFECTIONISM is staying stuck in anger and frustration.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is growing beyond where you ever expected to grow.
PERFECTIONISM is confining.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is freeing.
PERFECTIONISM is conformity to presuppositions.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is exploring new possibilities.
PERFECTIONISM is prejudging and rejecting any new possibilities.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is embracing them as they prove themselves worthwhile.
PERFECTIONISM is seeking to win admiration without giving anything of value in return.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is giving something better of yourself to others.
PERFECTIONISM is self-doubt.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is confidence.
PERFECTIONISM is closing yourself off.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is opening yourself up.
PERFECTIONISM is remaining right where you've always been.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is a journey of discovery.
PERFECTIONISM is a determination to defend an unproductive status quo.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is a surrender to a greater good.
PERFECTIONISM is fear.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is trust.
PERFECTIONISM is selfishness.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is selflessness.
PERFECTIONISM is a desperate and futile attempt to avoid rejection that you already expect as an absolute certainty.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is the openness to explore and the expectation that that exploration will ultimately lead to something better
PERFECTIONISM is the fear that something unpleasant will come from your efforts.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is an excitement over the improvements that you will help discover.
PERFECTIONISM is the expectation that your results will improve by continuing to do things in ways that have always failed in the past.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is a willingness always to find better, more effective ways.
PERFECTIONISM is a desire to stay exactly as you are and hope that doing so will make the world around you more compliant to your desires.

THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is a sincere desire to become all that God has made you capable of being as you make things better for others.

Hope this helps.
Jeff

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