Reply To: I Am Very New to Internet Marketing, Where Should I Start?
Tina has given a pretty detailed reply. It is always good to have a business plan over winging it. Otherwise you are heading out on a journey without a map or clear destination. I would take several days to consider, add notes and answers to her outline.
A common problem I find in helping people with any business is they don’t follow through and that includes me.
People will usually succeed in time with what Chet Holmes called pig headed determination, trial and error, they will eventually fail their way to success if they continue, even with a poor beginning plan. Sean kept trying things until he found something that worked and then tried more of it and other things, kept at it adjusting based on his results, rinse and repeat.
I want people to find this pig headed determination and sense of mission before we talk about anything else. In any business or even life you are going to find days when on a one to ten scale, today is a ten on the good reasons to quit scale. I want people to find their eleven on the one to ten scale of reasons they must achieve their goal. That way, when they reach a bad day that is a big bad ten, the eleven behind them pressing them on will overcome a ten on the bad day scale.
When we define a ten level reason to quit as the maximum and an eleven level reason to never quit, then we have already settled all of that when things get tough. The eleven flips the switch to on and welds it there. No turning back. We burned the boats. No wasting energy wondering if we should quit when we run up on this problem, we use the energy to solve the problem.
In working with people I now do a pre-business plan. A bit of education and a bit of soul searching. When you get this right you have a foundation you can build on and then make a good business plan. You will have your eleven.
For education, I want people to understand they must exchange things for money. Somehow people often miss this, I think they were sold the idea in some marketing piece or want to believe in something for nothing. They think there is an Aladdin’s lamp and they want their free wishes. They come to me with the most amazing things they think people will pay for.
What they exchange must have value to the customer.
To have value means it makes a positive change in their client’s life.
The anticipated positive change must be worth more in the client or customer’s mind than the money.
It has to be something you can communicate. You have to transfer your emotion about the product or service to the client. If you don’t have a positive emotion to transfer you will find it very hard to make the sale.
If I just ate breakfast I won’t be paying you twelve dollars for a hamburger, it won’t change my positive experience of life much, I am full, it might even make me sick if I overeat. If I am starving hungry, I might pay you twenty or thirty dollars, even more for a hamburger, it will end my hunger and change my experience of life for the better.
Having something to offer a hungry person is one side of the coin, the other side is knowing your life purpose, the thing you were put here to do. I worked in Fortune 500 companies for 22 years and I was as logical and down to earth as anyone that had a desk and office. In spite of seeing things that didn’t exactly add up, I believed in standard business models and the usual advice, work hard and you will get ahead, discipline is the answer, the more education you have the better prepared you are for life and success, those sort of things.
When I started my own business I soon learned there was a spiritual side to success. 2 plus 2 didn’t always add up to 4. Sometimes the result was a negative 2 and at others when you really needed a break it was a positive 16.
Lasting success is based on faith. You have to believe in you and what you do. You must believe you can help your client. If not they pick up on that no matter how pretty your presentation folder is or how shiny your shoes. It doesn’t hurt to believe in a higher power that is a resource to you outside of yourself. When you run up on a problem that is greater than your internal resources, if you don’t believe in external resources, what would make you continue to try? Every great achievement is almost always made two feet beyond what is physically possible. Once you give your all and still will yourself forward, that is when the miracle occurs.
In our food service business my wife and I quit several times before we succeeded. Thank God we never quit at the same time! Then when we ran up on a ridiculous tax bill (they had raised our taxes 600%) and it was life or death for the business and we were about to lose everything, I spent the house payment on a warehouse of merchandise from a chain of stores closing. I thought I was buying candy, cookies and chips for our vending machines. I had examined three or four boxes and was satisfied with what I saw.
My wife came home to see literally every room and nook and cranny, upstairs and downstairs filled with merchandise except the bathrooms and said, how did you pay for this? I said, with the house payment of course. She asked “and how do we make the house payment now?” I said, I am not sure, but they mixed up our order and they don’t want it back. I plan on going to the flea market this weekend and it looks like I have enough baby formula alone to sell and make the house payment.
I paid the house payment and the taxes on sales of baby formula, car wax, shoe polish, diapers, jars of pickles, barbecue sauce, tire shine and shaving cream. It wasn’t in the business plan, it wasn’t on the bill of sales for the warehouse, it wasn’t in our wildest dreams. Two feet past the possible the miracle happened.
What are you interested in? A solid interest or more truthfully an obsession for some topic or field is worth a fortune.
You skills and talents will lie where your interests lie.
How do you want to change the world?
What would you do all day, even if you weren’t paid to do it and you would feel your day was well spent?
What can you have faith in?
When you know your purpose, know your mission, pick the object that you know ties in with those things, then you can have faith in your success and confidence in your ability and outcome. With a burning desire, an eleven reason to succeed on the one to ten scale, the correct thing to offer others to change their lives that resonates with you and the faith and confidence that comes from knowing your purpose and being on a mission, you won’t fail to follow through.
Or you just might say, “I think there might be money in selling widgets.”
I have never seen that approach work longterm.
It is late, I just got in, I hope I made sense and in someway this helps you.
Scott Hogue CChH
Follow me in the "Use What You Learn Challenge" as I create a website using what I learn from Sean that is a Platform for my niche:
http://www.threestepstowealth.com
The thread on this group that explains it:
http://preneurpal.com/forums/topic/own-the-game-and-win-it/#post-1747
