Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

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

Labels: inspirational quotes

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

Labels: marketing, mindset

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

Labels: marketing, mindset, start business