How to Create a Bold, Daring and Utterly Irresistible Pricing Model
Posted on 22. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
There’s a traditional, somewhat logical, pattern to how business has always been done. The seller describes a product or service, promise benefits, maybe even paints a rosy picture of the prospective buyer’s life with said product or service, and asks the buyer to pay a set price in order to acquire it.
While this how it has always been done, there are a couple of inherent problems with this model, particularly when it comes to acquiring a fairly new product or service with little history or buyer success to point to as proof of promised results.
Problem #1
The biggest problem is that the buyer is left to shoulder the entire burden of risk. What if they don’t get the promised results? What if it isn’t what they need? What if, heaven forbid, it’s not as good as the commercial suggested?
Now, some of this doubt can be dismissed with guarantees, but still, the buyer must wade through the process.
Problem #2
Because we’ve all experienced problem #1 at some point, we’re reluctant to believe the claims and value propositions of something that really may be the answer to our challenges. In some cases, we forgo products and services that we need because we just aren’t sure the price risk outweighs the value or results promised.
I believe that one of the most effective ways to address this is to look at using a fee for value or results based pricing model, particularly in the case of new services.
Imagine for a moment the competitive selling advantage of a message like this: You’re in total control – you decide how much to pay at the end of the session – based on how much value you think you’ve received.
Or this: These are the results you’ll receive, but you don’t owe us a dime until you realize them fully.
I know that kind of pricing model is open for abuse. Some people just don’t value anything the way they should, so it would require careful consideration, but I really like a couple of things that it offers.
Benefit #1
It changes the relationship between buyer and seller. This kind of offer is quite likely very attractive to the buyer because the seller is now effectively shouldering a great deal of the risk. This means the seller can and should be very picky about whom they allow to enter into such an agreement and what they require from that buyer in terms of working together. This can’t be a come on to attract people that want a deal or it will never work. This has to be a serious offer meant to remove the barrier of doubt and that comes with it’s own price – accountability. If done correctly, this method could allow you to attract more ideal clients rather than price shoppers.
Benefit #2
This is the one that might be the real reason a seller would resist this model. If you make this kind of offer and your pay day really does depend on delivering the goods as opposed to writing a great sales letter, you better bring your A game.
Imagine if your created a service in a laboratory where you started to build how it would work, how you would engage the client, what support materials you needed and what price you needed to charge in order to make a profit. Now, fill this lab with ideal clients for this service and ask them to give you continuous, real-time feedback as to the results and value they are receiving as you continue to improve the offering until they are willing to pay what you needed.
In many ways, this could be the ultimate method for developing the perfect engagement for a new service.
Once you established the ultimate value through people’s realization of results, you could benchmark and prove this value in ways that would allow you to move the model to a fee based one, but my guess is the service would be far better than the one you dreamed up in the quarterly strategy meeting.
While shouldering the risk you would get better at what you do and create services that would surpass anything your competitors would dare to offer. In fact, you would have to do this, or you would go out of business.
There are pitfalls in this model, no doubt, but if you can profitably overcome and manage them, you’ll have a tool without competition.
This kind of bold confidence in what you have to offer, if positioned correctly, sends a very strong message to the potential market about your belief in your ability to deliver results.
Taking my own advice
Like a great deal of the advice I dispense on this blog, I’m taking it myself.
I am conducting a full day live and in person workshop in Kansas City in June called – How to Build the Marketing System That Is Perfect for Your Business and I am going to employ this the model of exchanging fee for value.
Attendees won’t be asked to pay anything until after the workshop is over and they get to determine how much. This won’t be a light, stripped down version – this is me, testing what my best stuff is worth, so you can bet I’ll be prepared and you can bet I’ll ask a lot of the attendees.
If you’re interested in finding out more or applying to attend (there are two dates available, but the groups will be very small) – have a look here
How to Create a Bold, Daring and Utterly Irresistible Pricing Model is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
13 Questions That Will Lead You To Your Perfect Marketing Strategy
Posted on 15. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, The Marketing Hourglass, Vision
Plenty of startups try to determine the perfect business model to take to market only to find that the market doesn’t need, want or understand what they are presenting.
The fact is most books or courses on business models take this into consideration by suggesting trial and error scenarios and market hypothesizes prior to launch.
Any business model, or plan for that matter, is little more than a guess and I believe that your best chance for getting that guess right is to build your business model based on a marketing strategy.
This assumes the role a fully developed marketing strategy actually should play in determining the direction of an organization. The fact is most people, if they consider marketing strategy at all, stop at a core message, identity elements and perhaps a sales proposition and call it a strategy.
A marketing strategy is how you plan to use the resources available to you to build an ongoing case that your business, products and services are the obvious choice for a narrowly defined ideal customer.
If you accept this expanded view of marketing strategy then I would suggest you answer the following questions in an attempt to measure where your strategy stands today and where it could go if your understood and integrated it fully as your business model
- What about this job, work, or organization are you passionate about?
- How does this business serve a higher purpose for you and your customers?
- What value do you really bring that benefits your market in ways that your competitors wouldn’t dream of proposing
- What’s the dominant personality trait that you need your customers to associate with your business?
- What does an ideal client look like?
- What is the simple 10-word core message that explains and excites?
- How will your market become aware of your business?
- How will your market come to trust that you have the answers?
- What are the revenue sources that you can tap to grow this business?
- Can you describe the perfect customer experience throughout your organization?
- What resource gaps and constraints do you need to overcome to achieve your strategy?
- What partnerships do you need to create in order to achieve your strategy?
- What would the result of using this strategy model to run your business look like?
13 Questions That Will Lead You To Your Perfect Marketing Strategy is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
We Don’t Need No Stinkin Process
Posted on 27. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, system, Vision
I’ve spent the last decade or so preaching the gospel of systems thinking for marketing.
I chose the word system as the cornerstone of the Duct Tape Marketing point of view because after working with small business owners for many years I found that they had no problem thinking about systems when it came to things like getting the product out the door or paying the bills. When it came to marketing, however, they never had anything that remotely resembled a system or systems thinking.
The White Board debate rages on
Over the years I’ve discovered that system is s big word and it’s up for lots of interpretation depending upon your dominant personality type or experience or whether you favor Demming, Drucker or Gerber.
See, I have a system for just about everything I do, but for someone that defines a system as manual, timeline, Gantt chart and task list, my system is rather maddening.
For me a system is simply a way to recognize how you practice your art, it’s not a stone carved tablet kind of thing.
The key to making this definition work is that you recognize and fully understand the pattern of how you get things done. Once you do that you can work inside of a framework that allows you document and collaborate in a systems kind of way.
For example, procrastination is a measured part of creation for me. If I find that I’m having trouble getting to something, it’s my universe telling me that I don’t have what I need fully formed yet – that’ just part of the process and I know it and adapt to it. It’s not a crutch when you recognize the power behind it.
To create forms and procedures or even rigid plans for how something actually gets done is one of the quickest ways to kill the unique art that’s possible.
While I firmly believe that you must align everyone’s thinking with a core set of shared objectives, you must stay equally flexible with how those objectives are achieved.
When you create an action plan that specifies every step along that path it’s a bit like jumping on a speeding train and saying I don’t know where we are going, but I know we’ll be on time.
A marketing system allows for innovation, ideation, new data, testing, refining, restarting and pivoting inside of a strategic framework that recognizes the need for checklists.
But, kill the art and you’ll kill the magic.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin Process is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
How to Startup Before You Startup
Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
If you’re thinking about starting a business or even if you’ve already started one, don’t spend your time fussing over spreadsheets, logos, budgets or competition.
Packed house on opening day
Those are all parts of the puzzle, but if you want to build a business that cannot fail, spend what may feel like an exorbitant amount of time focused on building and nourishing a community.
I know you’ve got to pay the bills, but get this part right and you’ll never have to worry about having enough business.
In a perfect world, every business would spend a year or so doing nothing but community building before they ever opened the doors.
So, what would that look like?
Natalie George had a day job and dream of opening a healthy, all natural, vegan and raw food restaurant. The vision for this restaurant was created after a dining at well-known San Francisco restaurant Café Gratitude.
After several years of hoping, she launched the business. The only thing is there were no pots and pans or forks or glasses, in fact, there was no physical place at all. She launched the business by asking people to help her build it.
She began by inviting people to join a community that cared about the ideals of gratitude, abundance, community building and, of course, raw food.
She raised money to build the business by holding workshops and selling gift cards for future use. She asked everyone to join her mailing list to keep up on the progress. She shared stories about the ups and downs, exciting and frustrating moments and the joy of making tables from reclaimed wood.
The following four items were the focus of her website.
Cafe Gratitude is opening in Kansas City
Would you like to be a part of making it happen? There are several ways to contribute!
1. We are starting Cafe Gratitude KC Store Builders. Purchase a gift certificate to be used at Cafe Gratitude KC for $1000, and you will get a $1200 gift certificate! That’s a 20% return on investment and will totally support the opening of Cafe Gratitude!
2. Attend one of our upcoming events: Community Building Workshop, Abounding River Practice or intenSati.
3. Ask yourself, friends and family, “What are you grateful for?”
4. Sign up for our mailing list and we’ll keep you posted on our progress, events and future ways you can contribute.
I went to the opening preview event last week and the line to get in wrapped around a city block. Once inside the place was packed with people celebrating with organic beer and wine and the music of the Makepeace Brothers band, but more than anything, they were celebrating their place in a community – and by all accounts, that’s going to make for one health business venture.
So, how do to you start a community building business?
- Develop a clear vision
- Focus on giving
- Get out in your market and teach
- Start connecting everyone
- Tell stories and share your goals
- Ask people to help
- Let people contribute
How to Startup Before You Startup is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Today I Think I Shall Blog in My Underwear
Posted on 23. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Hugh MacLeod, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
Odd as it may sound the title to this post isn’t really odd at all. In fact, most days I blog before the sun comes up and most days I wear whatever I feel like while doing so.
One of my favorite bits of Hugh MacLeod inspiration
Now, that doesn’t mean I’m not serious about my blog. It is quite easily the most important business asset I’ve built. Today’s post title, however, is a nod to the freedom that my blog and the Internet in general have created for my business over the last ten years.
This week, my friend and long time blogger, Hugh MacLeod releases his 3rd book, Freedom Is Blogging In Your Underwear, a sharp tongued tribute to the freedom we now have to work how we want, where we want and with whom we want. Hugh’s humor and wit, expressed through his unique characters and drawings, is one of the most inspirational romps anyone in the world of business can enjoy.
Hugh credits his blogging habit with altering the course of his business and personal life and creating the flourishing business that allows him to work at his craft.
A few words from Hugh:
I wrote the book as a love letter to the blogging, as it were. Blogging matters. Sure, the apps are good things. Sharing photos and finding out new restaurants is a definite positive. But as an artist, I come from a background where getting your work seen and heard was REALLY HARD. Gatekeepers galore. Had blogs existed back when I was a kid, a lot of my creative peers wouldn’t have given up their dreams in order to go do some bill-paying government job.And what’s true for artists is also true for ANYONE who gives a damn about their work. Too many voices, lost unnecessarily.
I too would make a similar claim. While some are quick to rush in and hail the next new online tool as the death of blogging, I would suggest that blogging is never going away. Blogging is the underpinning that launched a revolution of sorts in business and the only thing that will kill that off is a radical retreat in our desire to work in ways that allow us to control our destiny.
See, it’s not really about the tool; it’s about the behavior it unleashed. It’s about the fact that anyone, with any roots, experience, or desire could freely publish information directly to the audience they wished to influence. And that the stories, images, opinions and ideas shared would stand on their own merit and be consumed and shared by others regardless of what the established media, gatekeepers and experts said about it.
And for me it’s not even about the exposure my ideas enjoy. I wrote my first blog post in 2003 and knew immediately it was something important. It’s not that I knew blogging would become an essential tool, but I did sense that the act of blogging would change my business forever.
There are a few about blogging I did not know at the beginning, however, and it is these things that have produced the most profound and lasting benefits.
- Blogging would make me a better thinker – (understand that better is relative!) In an effort to create content for a blog that is succinct, reveals new ways to look at common things, or apply simple solutions to seemingly complex problems, I believe I now think about business much differently.
- Blogging would make me a better listener – When I engage in conversation or listen to radio interviews, I listen with a writer’s ear and often find my head filling up with blog post ideas by simply listening to others discuss sometimes unrelated subjects.
- Blogging would make me a better writer – The fact that I practice writing daily has made me a better writer. It doesn’t mean I’m the world’s greatest writer, but practicing something makes you better at it – hard to deny that. Of course writing publicly like this also allows for community reaction to help you get better faster.
- Blogging would make me a better salesperson – I write like I speak and often I write to sell an idea or even a very specific tactic. It’s amazing, but I find that clearly stating idea pitches in writing has improved my ability to quickly articulate them in a selling or interview setting. It’s like you build up this reserve bank of pre tested discussion points.
- Blogging would make me a better speaker – This one falls nicely from the previous point but I’ll also add that working through blog posts on meatier topics, those that readers weigh in on, has produced some of my best presentation material to date.
- Blogging would keep me focused on learning – The discipline required to create even somewhat interesting content in the manner I’ve chosen requires that I study lots of what’s hot, what’s new, what’s being said and what’s not being said in order to find ways to apply it to the world of small business.
- Blogging would allow me to test out ideas – I’ve made some incredible discoveries about some of my ideas (okay, and had a few flops too) based on the immediate and sometimes passionate response from readers. Many of the ideas in my upcoming book were tested and molded here.
- Blogging would make me a better networker – I have developed hundreds of relationships with other writers that provide me with ideas, tips and resources to share and who willingly pass on my ideas, tips and resources. Some of these relationships remain professionally on the surface, but some have evolved into very strategic and fulfilling personal relationships as well. (Sharing a beer at a conference helps that along)
- Blogging would allow me to create bigger ideas – This one is related to testing out ideas, but the habit of producing content over time also affords you the opportunity to create larger editorial ideas that can be reshaped and repurposed for other settings. I’ve taken a collection of blog posts on a specific topic and turned them into an ebook more than once.
So Hugh, thanks for the inspiration and to all the bloggers, readers, commenters, linkers, sharerers and grammar defenders that stop by, thanks for collaborating on the canvass that gives me the freedom to practice what I feels like art.
Today I Think I Shall Blog in My Underwear is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Not All Questions Should Be Answered by Google
Posted on 18. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
I’m a big proponent of questions. Asking the right questions has the power to move your business forward in ways that no amount of having all the right answers ever will. I’ve been imploring small business owners to ask every customer a handful of specific questions for many years now.
alexanderdrachmann via Flickr
It’s very tempting these days to turn to Google for answers to most every business question, but sometimes the only way to get meaningful answers to life’s most important questions is to sit in front of another real human being and pay attention to what you ask and how they respond.
The real value in systematically posing questions in this intentional way is that it often evokes answers that make us think, give us insight, and provide us an opportunity to hear stories that draw us closer to the people we’ve queried.
Questioning is an art more than anything else and the real gems in terms of answers come when you have the courage to ask what I call the question inside the question.
The question inside the question is a layering of sorts that allows you to pass through the obvious surface to where something much more useful and perhaps even magical can occur.
Below are three varieties of powerful questions inside the questions.
Questions that evolve
One of my favorite customer questions is this – what is it that we do that others don’t? The standard answer to this question is often something like – “you provide good service.”
The problem with this answer is that while good service is, well, good, the answer by itself isn’t very helpful really because who doesn’t claim to provide good service. To stop at this level of answer is to miss the opportunity to get into the mind of your customer.
The evolving question inside this question then is – can you tell me a story about a time when we provided good service? This question allows you to get at something terribly specific that just might provide you with a way to describe your value proposition in terms of something that actually matters to your market.
Questions that go unasked
One the hardest jobs marketers have is to understand and then articulate the things prospects don’t know they don’t know. This is a subtle art because the only real signals we receive come in form of questions that prospects ask or what many marketers call FAQs or frequently asked questions.
The art is in this question inside the question is in understanding the things that should be asked, but aren’t. I’ve gone as far as calling these frequently unasked questions or FUQs.
Questions that interrupt
I’ve been interviewing authors and thought leaders on a weekly basis for years now and I’ve asked my share of generic questions that have elicited equally generic answers. What I love are those moments when I hit on a question that makes my guest light up and offer an unexpected, but totally authentic answer.
Ann Handley of Marketing Profs shared a great example of this approach with me recently. Instead of asking “What’s your book about?” Ask “What did you leave out of your book that you wish you put in?
This approach is a tremendous way to ask questions that are thoughtful and allow you to gain immediate rapport, deeper engagement and equally thoughtful replies.
You know you’re on the right track in this line of question inside the question when people occasionally stop and smile before they answer because you’ve asked something they’ve always wanted to answer but no one bothered to ask.
Not All Questions Should Be Answered by Google is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
How to Build a Business That Cannot Fail
Posted on 16. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
There are many reasons why businesses don’t make it, but undoubtedly, the primary culprit is a lack of profitable clients.
Jagz Mario via Flickr
I know that should seem obvious, but if more people truly appreciated this fact, they would go about their business in an entirely different manner.
Most businesses are started by people who think they know how to do something or think they want to sell something. In other words, most businesses are started with the business in mind.
But, if we actually understood that the only thing that mattered was an abundant volume of profitable customers, we would surely start with the customer in mind, right?
Customer focus vs. business focus
Another way of saying this is that instead of starting a business and then going out and finding customers that want to buy what you sell, you should go out and find customers and then build a business around what they want to buy.
In this model you really only have two jobs to master. First, you must come to understand precisely what your market will pay for and then you must build a repeatable sales system that allows you to profitably get it to them.
Get customer discovery and sales right and you can’t fail.
No matter if you’re an accountant, consultant, plumber or jeweler, your main job is to get out there into some segment of the market you hope to serve and ask them what they want, what they don’t have and what they are willing to pay for, even if what they want isn’t what you want to sell – or maybe especially if that’s the case.
Until you fully appreciate this idea your business is a crapshoot at best.
Now, I’m not saying that you’re going to base every decision, every feature, every twist and turn on customer feedback, but I am saying that you need to stay very close to customers and prospects as you think about your offerings and test everything with them until you land on a value proposition that gains traction.
Test and evolve
Before you launch a business or product test your assumptions – test your packaging, pricing, bundling, message, products, services, branding, revenue streams and business model with some segment of your market and pay attention. So often, what seems crystal clear to us makes no sense when unleashed into the wild.
This is not the same as research really – this is more like constant, real-time feedback and it involves constant testing, including what the customer experience is like after they buy, why they might buy more and what it would take to get them to refer you.
Build a sales action process
This is a process and the aim of this process is to figure out how to create profitable customers before you commit to what your business actually does and offers.
Once you do this, you can move to building and scaling a marketing action plan that turns this process into consistent and predictable results.
Then and only then, will you build a business that cannot fail.
How to Build a Business That Cannot Fail is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
How an Entrepreneur Imagines the World
Posted on 10. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
How an Entrepreneur Imagines the World
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I hang around with lots of small business owners and not all are what one would call entrepreneurs. In fact, many are simply people that happen to own a job that pays the bills.
hillcountryhack via Flickr CC
Don’t get me wrong, these are good people, really good people, but calling them entrepreneurs sort of muddies the distinction.
So what is the difference? What are the character traits that one possesses or actions that one endeavors that qualifies them for this often misused label?
I’ve been asked this question repeatedly and until now not come up with a distinction that captured it adequately.
That is until I found myself in the kitchen with my wife.
I think describing the very different ways that my wife and I approach cooking can best capture the difference between how an entrepreneur and the rest of normal civilization view the world.
My wife enters the kitchen, cleans up any lingering messes, imagines a meal, looks up a recipe, acquires the ingredients, carefully measures, mixes and serves the meal all the while cleaning up as she goes. This is, of course, a perfectly logical approach to eating and entertaining.
I, on the other hand, enter the kitchen, figure out what we have on the shelves, ponder combinations of things I like, decide how these things could be combined to make what I hypothesize would be something good to eat, taste, test, add, mix, add more, revel in the odd discoveries, pivot based on what I learn and whisk what seems reasonable onto the plate of anyone I can convince to eat. And, somehow every single pot and pan available gets pressed into service and dirtied.
My wife imagines a future meal based on what she knows and I imagine a future meal based on what I discover as I go, and that I think is as clear a distinction of the entrepreneurial mindset as I can illustrate.
Entrepreneurs don’t learn by thinking, they learn by doing.
I had occasion recently to spend some time with Ned Hallowell, M.D., Ed.D., a child and adult psychiatrist, New York Times bestselling author and leading authority in the field of ADHD.
Hallowell will tell you that an extremely high number of entrepreneurs share many of the same traits as the ADHD patients he has treated over the years. The primary difference is that they’ve been able to channel what is, for some, a debilitation into an asset.
Hallowell’s research and treatment of persons with ADHD is shedding entirely new light on the power of this trait.
In the words of Dr. Hallowell, “In my opinion, ADHD is a terrible term. As I see it, ADHD is neither a disorder, nor is there a deficit of attention. I see ADHD as a trait, not a disability.”
And there, perhaps, you have it – entrepreneurship is a trait, that unmet, untended or unleashed could be considered by some a disability – or you could imagine a world where you discover only by doing.
The Three Most Important Factors of Business Success
Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Commit, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
The Three Most Important Factors of Business Success
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
While there are many factors that come into play when building a business, I believe that most important ones have nothing to do with innovation, balance sheets, finance or marketing. The most important over arching variable to your success in business is you.
ChodHound via Flickr
Success, however you choose to define it, is a continual work in progress. Ask anyone who’s made lots of money if they are “there.” Even though we’ve been sold on the idea of making it big, most often you’ll find there is no there for truly successful people – it’s not when I make my first million, it’s not when I get my fiftieth employee, it’s not when I land on the cover of the industry publication. Success is simply a road to travel in an attempt to create a more compelling and enriching future.
But, as with all roads, there is a direction you must travel to keep moving towards your destination even if, like the far off horizon, that destination keeps moving away no matter how quickly you move towards it.
In my own journey I can tell you there are three factors that have both led me and, at times, held me from advancing towards my picture of success.
Some of the most fruitful work I can do is centered on improving in these three areas.
1) Who I am
This a pretty big one and I won’t propose any prescriptions here, but I have found that when I commit to working on my core beliefs about what’s possible, what I’m driven to give to the world, how I want that world to experience my gifts, I have very little trouble taking action that’s in line with who I am.
The really beautiful thing about working on things like internal passion and purpose is that your progress comes out so authentically in all manner of external interaction. When people can genuinely feel that you care about what you are engaged in you are an incredibly convincing salesperson – without actually trying to sell anything.
This is an area that most everyone must practice. You must develop habits that force you be conscious of who you’re being. For me, writing my thoughts on paper each morning, spending time meditating and revisiting simple passages that serve to remind me of the version of my best self keep me focused on this practice.
I’ve also developed a series of questions that I can roll through before anything I do in an attempt to bring the right intention to every situation. Simply stopping and asking yourself why your are doing something, why it’s important and what a great outcome would look like is a great way to center yourself prior to making a large presentation to a group or meeting to discuss a new project with a staff member.
2) Where I’ve been
This doesn’t have anything to do with travel, although I suppose it could. For me this is all about leveraging what I’ve experienced, what I’ve learned, skills I’ve acquired, and what I intentionally expose myself to in an effort to learn more.
We’ve all been exposed to a life time of lessons, some serve us well and some hold us back, but it’s how you use this mixture and enhance this mixture and overcome elements of this mixture that defines success in many areas of business and life.
I didn’t do particularly well in school, but my brain is kind of wired to learn new things, dig into new subjects and explore topics seemingly unrelated to my field of work. I read some portion of about twenty books a month, subscribe to at least one hundred blogs and still get seven or either magazines delivered in my mail box.
Lifelong learning, exploring and simply tuning your brain to pay attention to everything that’s going on around you is another key factor in moving towards success.
3) Who I hang out with
There are many studies that offer validity to the notion that what you believe, how you act and even how much earning potential you have has a great deal to do with the people you surround yourself with.
Now, this can work for you or against you. Parents, school friends and social setting initially influence most people. As you venture into business you soon realize that customers, vendors, mentors and even competitors can play a big role in the success of your business.
When you’re first getting started you may attract customers that mirror your sense of self worth or doubt, but as you begin to grow you’ll soon learn that you must raise you own expectations to the level where you insist on working only with people you respect and admire.
I belong to two mastermind groups and I get to hang out for full days with people that have already achieved many things in business that I aspire to achieve. In addition to developing a network of people that can help me succeed in tangible ways this experience also opens me up to accepting that I can indeed think much bigger.
In order to move towards this ideal many people have chosen to immerse themselves in the study of people they admire through memoirs or even a mentor relationship. Pick three or four people that you view as successful, dead or alive, and learn everything you can about how they think act and grow.
Study and seek out a team of like minded strategic partners and focus a great deal of time and energy on building deep and meaningful working relationships with this group and you’ll quickly find that your own personal network will begin to fill up with people that can help you grow and thrive.
Find and join a mastermind group that pushes you to stretch and think bigger.
There are so many things we can get caught up in trying to accomplish, but experience tells me that if we go to work everyday on the internal, the external success we so crave will show up as mileposts along the road.
There Can Be No Real Commitment Until You Surrender All Doubt
Posted on 16. Feb, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Commit, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Vision
There Can Be No Real Commitment Until You Surrender All Doubt
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
mirandiki via Flickr CC
There can be no life, passion or purpose in a business that lacks commitment. It’s just too hard otherwise. I’ve stated here before that I believe commitment or failure to commit is one of the central themes of our lives.
It is what drives us forward and drives us away. It is what provides us with passion and fuels our greatest fears. It is what guides us to take a road less traveled or herds us on to the deeply rutted path.
As it turns out I’ve written an entire book around this idea because I think it’s such an important topic for our times. (The book will be out in the fall from Portfolio.)
Commitment is one of those very tricky words. It gets a great deal of play in the worlds of sports, romance and business alike. It’s a word that’s often linked to achievement, but I believe it’s a word that is greatly misunderstood.
Commitment isn’t about projects or events; it’s a long-term game. In fact, it may really be a lifelong game, but it’s not the kind of game that’s portrayed in movies. It’s not about being committed to something no matter what. It’s not about staying committed even to only one thing.
It’s about searching for the deeper meaning of your life and bringing what you find in that to every moment that you can.
I am committed to my wife, but when I tell her I love her, what I’m really telling her is that I’m committed to figuring out how to love her even when I struggle doing so.
I am committed to my business, but when I say that I’m not saying that I’m committed to growing it to some size or stature. What I’m really saying is that I’m committed to the idea that I can help small business owners find their purpose and passion through my words and my work even when I’m not sure what my next move should be.
See, commitment isn’t about the grind it’s about clarity, control and consent.
In order to possess the kind of commitment that will serve you, serve those around you and ultimately serve your business, you must be crystal clear about what you believe and why and you must put those beliefs into action in every decision.
In order to possess the kind of commitment that will serve you, serve those around you and ultimately serve your business, you must develop a sense of control about where you are headed but release a great deal of control about how you’ll arrive there.
In order to possess the kind of commitment that will serve you, serve those around you and ultimately serve your business, you must give yourself permission to learn and grow and evolve with the help of others.
Until your sense of commitment is infused with these three things there will always be uncertainty.
And mostly, there can be no real commitment until you surrender all doubt.
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