Marketing Success Comes From Just Following Through
January 31, 2009
I recently read an interview with Jane Wurwand, the woman who started Dermalogica, a fantastically successful skin care line used in many salons and spas. One paragraph of her interview really stood out to me. Here it is:
“If you just follow through on what you say you’re going to do, you’ll be surprised how well your business can do. Operate a total ‘no-flake zone.’ So many people are so inconsistent and unreliable – you can shine by just being ethical, with character and reliability!”
I agree with Jane. I work with many small business owners who think great thoughts but do not put intention behind their ideas. They make excuses such as “I have a terrible memory,” or “I’m just not good at this” or “I’m such a ditz.” I am convinced any success I’ve had in my business is because I consistently, absolutely follow through. That’s at least half the game, and maybe more! Research shows that 90% of people in business do not follow through, and of those who do, 90% will not follow through more than 4 times before giving up. No excuses! Just do it!
Does Your Website Confuse Potential Customers?
January 30, 2009
I’m in the process of having one of my websites (www.confidentmarketer.com) critiqued. If you don’t know Bob Regnerus and you are marketing information on the web, you should check him out. What am I learning? For one thing, advertising on your site can sell, or it can brand you. It can’t effectively do both.
A website is often a confusing place to someone who hits it as a result of a Google search. That person is looking for words that match (hopefully, exactly match) the keywords he just typed into Google search. If, instead, there are many different messages and links on the page he first hits, chances are that he will click away before you can capture information about him.
Bob’s advice is to offer a series of yes or no questions that lead the visitor through your website. Too many choices get people off on a tangent. I’ve found this to be true in reviewing some of my client’s sites. I can easily get lost and far away from their own pages if their first page is a “portal site” with tons of links to other sites. I will follow the links that are of interest to me and eventually can’t easily get back to where I started.
If you want to act as a portal to other resources, it’s best to establish your own identity first, capture the visitor’s contact information, and let visitors have access to other links at a later time.
Make your site easy on the eyes and on the brain, and your business will thrive.
Why Do We Procrastinate?
January 23, 2009
I’d bet a lot of money that procrastination costs businesses more lost sales than any other single factor. And I know from hard experience that the “p-word” causes suffering in families, too. Why DO we put things off? Procrastination seems to fall into two categories. The first category includes when we really do NOT want to take the action. Here are two examples:
- We don’t want to do whatever it is, but we also don’t want to speak up and disagree. Instead, we take the passive way out and sit on it, silently expressing disagreement through inaction.
- We are angry with the person this action will affect, so we procrastinate as a silent expression of anger.
The second category is when we say or think that we want to take action, but we just don’t ever get to it. Usually, the inaction can be traced to one of three issues:
- We don’t know how to do it
- The action isn’t really necessary – it’s a should and it therefore isn’t a high priority
- We are missing a piece of information we need to move forward.
So how can we move past procrastination and into action? In the case of silent disagreement or anger, it helps to remind ourselves that only action will shift disagreement or anger, inaction bottles the energy up in us and has ill effects.
In the case of “I want to do it, I just never get to it” we can apply a few rules to help get us unstuck.
- Prioritize your “to-do but never gets done” list SOLELY by return on investment (ROI). This is not usually how we go about prioritizing, but in business it should be!
- Take each item on your list and literally write each into your schedule, using a realistic time frame for completion. (Hint: These tasks usually take longer than we wish, which is one reason we keep putting them off.)
- Hand it off to someone else on your team to get done (with a clearly stated deadline).
Accept that procrastination’s cost is too high for both your personal and business lives, and you will get more focused and live with greater clarity and peace of mind. These two will definitely help your business thrive.
The Business of Being Ill
January 18, 2009
I looked forward to 2009 with such fervor! My calendar is reworked to provide time for business maintenance and growth and I have new products and programs moving forward. Not far into the New Year the promise of a personal retreat waits for me, with time for warm sunshine, writing, and visiting with friends. I am geared up and ready to roll, to maximize my business, enjoy personal time, and faithfully use my new Wii fit every day.
Ten days ago I was diagnosed with pneumonia. I have spent the last week on IV’s, swallowing pills, taking breathing treatments, and being so weak and woozy from medicine that I could barely remember what day it was. My focus on business and revamped personal time was gone. My new Wii fit lay silently down a set of stairs I could not even walk without starting to black out. My ability to fly off to my personal retreat has been in doubt. I had reactions to the strong antibiotics and turned beat red from the steroids. For a few days, I struggled to find enough breath to even breathe deep for the doctor’s stethoscope. Honestly, I am as ill as I have ever been in my life. One night, I regretted that we hadn’t yet gotten around to updating our wills.
I was thrown right into the business of being ill. And you know what? I found that some of my business skills came to very good use. I had to be decisive even though a little fearful. I had to be diligent and committed to follow through. I had to revamp my daily plans to include the unexpected and deal with delays. I needed to rely on a different team of people – but I still needed a team. And most of all – oh MOST of all – I had to continue learning to let go. Let go of wanting to do it all myself, let go of the irritation that comes from not getting to do exactly what I want to do when I want to do it. Let go of the fear of disappointing clients who have long waited to work with me. Let go of looking weak to the world. Let go, let go.
As I have slowly come back to the water’s surface, able to breathe a little more easily, I realize that I have drafted new chapters of books in my head and envisioned a whole new way to do workshops. While my body rests, my mind’s ability to create has continued, and even benefitted from the not-busy, quieter days. Letting go didn’t mean oblivion and total lack of achievement. It meant healing and a new creativity, all in one. My life and my business have continued to thrive. Seems like I’ve benefitted, even from pneumonia. Amazing!
When Dreams Come True
January 14, 2009
There’s a lot in the workshop world these days about abundance and visioning. It isn’t something really new, as teenagers many of us made collages of things we loved. But there’s a lot more talk these days about the importance of visioning – the importance of looking deeply into ourselves, having the courage to write about and picture what we secretly most want. I’ve decided to share my story about dreams coming true, on the theory that it just might help someone else who is doubting that they can have what they want.
About 13 years ago now I became a member of a Quest group. One of the first things the group’s leader had us do was to answer, in writing, a series of questions about our clearest vision of our life – how we would be living it in the coming years, what would feel the most satisfying and truest life for each of us, how our relationships would be, what our work would look like. When I got this set of questions and was told to write an essay about them I was working in a very high-powered, high-stress position. I was not happy doing it, but the money was very good and I had made the decision to do this work for a while so that my husband and I could buy lake property and build a house. I worked 60 to 80 hours a week, travelled all the time, and managed a large group of people. While I was very successful, I was also very exhausted. So, to get this long writing assignment thrown into the mix didn’t make me very happy. I was stressed out, pissed off at working so hard, and already lugging around a bulging briefcase as I flew back and forth to D.C. I really DIDN’T want to spend time answering these questions.
So, in my best “I really don’t agree with doing this” manner, I answered – truthfully but also in a peeved tone. I started the essay by saying that “I had no idea how I would ever get there, but what I really wanted was” — and I held forth for three solid, single spaced typed pages. I folded it up, took it to the next group meeting, and read it aloud, unsmiling, when my turn came. Then, I efficiently folded it into thirds, popped it into the back of my daily planner, and promptly forgot it was there.
Fast forward 10 years later. The exhausting job was long gone. I was home one day, bored, and decided to clean out my now-defunct daily planner (I was on computer now!). I thought the planner was empty, and before throwing it into the trash I held it by the spine and shook it hard. And, out from the last, back, hard to reach pocket fell that 3 typed pages that I had long ago forgotten. I wondered what it was, and opened it up – and to my absolute and total amazement I read three pages of “what I really wanted” – and, point by point, every single one of my wants had come true! It was and is crazy, unbelievable, ridiculous. I sat there next to the trash can, holding what was my most precious possession – my vision for myself, my life on a page, my deepest heart’s desires. And I realized in that moment how wise and special the leader of our little Quest group was. How indebted to him I was. How grateful, fortunate, and lucky I was to have secretly carried my dreams with me for all those years, and how writing them and speaking them aloud to that group had taught me that energy follows thought.
Yes, dreams do come true. And as they do, we add more dreams. There is always forward movement until the moment we give up, and begin to die. One of the reasons I so believe in and support people in visioning is the lesson I learned myself – the one that took me a decade to learn. My small group Visioning fron the Heart workshops are my own way of helping others to Quest now. And my sincere belief is that the same dream coming true will happen to you.
(Credits: With many thanks to my friend BJ Ryan for the use of her painting “Sunset in the Desert.”)
Why You Don’t Have What You Want
January 3, 2009
I just ran across a quote that talks about self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is another term for approach/avoidance, a great term I learned in grad school. Approach/avoidance happens when we want two opposite things equally. It’s like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object – what happens is a big fat nothing. We think the conscious thought, but the unconscious believe cancels out any action. Or, two conscious thoughts are equally strong. “I want to make six figures this year.” “I don’t want to have money, I’ll have no excuse not to support my sorry son.” What happens is, you stew. And stewing isn’t forward movement.
So, here’s the quote: “If you don’t have what you want — here’s the reason – your subconscious holds some contradictory intentions for you. To put it simply, you want something and it doesn’t.” A man named Robert Anthony wrote that.
The quote is both succinct and helpful. We can get at what our subconscious holds in various ways – through visualization, journaling, and dreaming to name just a few.
Thinking about what we say we want and yet do not have means digging underneath the “top excuses” we offer when things are not as we say we’d like. What we have at this moment in time is truly what we want – or at least what some very strong part of us wants. A great exercise in between watching all the bowl games and taking down Christmas decorations is to sit and imagine your best, most perfect life. What you don’t have? Well, there’s a part of you that doesn’t want it. Chew on that for a bit, and see what happens. There will be realizations, and maybe changes – and more than likely those will help you and your business thrive.