Here’s a question for you:
Why do millions of people own exercise machines, which they used for a week and then packed away somewhere, never to be used again?
The answer is simple, yet it contains a valuable lesson.
The reason people bought those machines, is because the ‘perfect’ people in the TV commercials advertising them, promised 6-pack abs in weeks with just 3 minutes of fun exercise a day. Why did the marketing team behind that machine promise those amazing results in just 180 seconds a day? Because they know that the average person wants results without the pain. They want the washboard abs, just so long as they can still eat crap and avoid exercise for the remaining 23 hours and 57 minutes of each day.
In business, I see examples every day of people who want the results, without paying the price. However, as my mentor, the late great Jim Rohn used to say; “for every promise, there’s a price to pay.” In other words, if we want a particular end result, we need to take the actions required to get that result first. We need to pay the price in advance.
- Want marketing that works, so that your business thrives in 2010? Stop relying on generic, free advice to grow your business.
- Want better cash flow? Hire a better accountant.
- Want people to spread great word of mouth publicity about your business? Make your business worth talking about.
This really is nothing more than common sense – yet the failure to apply it is putting people out of business, every hour of every day.
Paying the price in advance
If there’s something, which someone wants from their business in 2010, that was missing in 2009; they have a decision to make. They can either decide to start paying the price for success or they can continue to count the cost of failure.