Marketing tips Marketing help

Be stingy with your time, but not your ideas

June 5, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Laura emailed me with a great question. She wanted to know why I give so many ideas away for free.

I’ve chosen to share my answer with you, because I believe it contains a really useful idea.

The contribution mindset

I see it like this:

If you own 3 bags of gold and you give 1 of them away, you are left with 2 pieces of gold. Give all 3 bags of gold away and you’re left with nothing.
However, if you give someone an idea, you still have just as many ideas as you had before. Plus, you have just enriched the other person. Even better, you may have just made a new friend too.

Scaling generosity

The key is to find a way to share your ideas, which scales. In other words, a way to be generous with your ideas that doesn’t leave you with too little time to do the things that you need to do.

If you give an hour of your time away to 10 individual people every day, you have just lost 10 hours of your time. It doesn’t scale. It’s unsustainable. You’ll soon end up broke.
However, if you give an hour of your time to your community every day, in a way that reaches 10 people or 10,000 people you have still only invested 1 hour. Blogging, newsletters, vlogging and podcasts are just some of the ways you can achieve this.

We must be stingy with our time

It’s important to remind ourselves that the clock is ticking. We only have a limited supply of time each day. But when it comes to helping people, by adopting the right strategy we can choose to be generous. We can choose to contribute to the success and happiness of others.

Being generous with our ideas is always important. But especially so in times like these, when so many others really need our help.

Here’s what your prospective clients really want from you

May 31, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

So, what are your prospective clients (or customers) looking for from you?

The answer to that question remains the same, for every business owner. And it holds true for every industry and in every economy. It’s simply this: They want a bargain.

That’s it.

They want something from you, which is being sold for less than its value. Preferably, way less than its value.

This includes the “money’s no object” crowd. Think about it, when the wealthy customer spends half a million dollars on a piece of jewellery, they want to feel like a million dollars. A million dollar feeling, for just half a million dollars. What a bargain.
The same is true when the shopper on a restricted budget needs a new phone. They go for the best value in their price range. This may be a phone with some of the features, usually found on a more expensive model. What a bargain.

Whatever end of the market you serve, make your value clear. Explain what sets you apart from similarly-priced competitors or what makes your product such an amazing proposition. And if there’s not much separating you from your competitors, pump more value into what you provide.

Do this until there’s so much value attached to what you offer, that it’s the obvious choice. The best option. Well worth the money… and then some.

Given the state of the global economy, this emphasis on value is critically important. People are thinking harder before they hire someone or buy something.

In short, your marketing needs to be more convincing, because your prospects need more convincing.

List building: How to build a list that builds your business

May 28, 2020 by Jim Connolly

People often ask me for tips on how to build a bigger list. They want more subscribers; more readers, more listeners, more viewers, more followers, etc.

The short answer is simple. It’s this.

Create useful content, which is worthy of people’s attention and make it really easy for them to subscribe.

If you do that, you’ll attract more people and because your content is useful, many of them will subscribe. Think about it. That’s the exact process, which motivated you to subscribe to every list you’re on. Something attracted you, you found it useful, you subscribed.

This begs the question: If the answer is so simple, why is it so darn hard to build a large and valuable list?

Here’s the slightly longer answer.

The advice is simple. The process is tricky

There’s some tricky stuff between you and that massively valuable list you want.

Finding something useful to share, on a regular basis, is tricky. Remember, if you just churn out the same stuff as others in your industry, you won’t attract subscribers or retain them. This means you’ll need to be willing to do some research. You’ll need to become a regular note-taker. A collector of ideas. It’s interesting work, but if you’re not already someone who studies and takes notes, it can take a while to transition.

Finding the time to create content is also tricky. You’re already busy, right? Developing content around all that interesting material you have, takes time. That time is easy to justify when you have a huge list. It’s harder to justify, when your hard work is being consumed by just a small number of people. You’ll need to push through the tumbleweed and crickets of the early stages. And I know from personal experience, that can be a real challenge. I explain why here.

Summoning the courage to publish your stuff is tricky. Why? Because if you do it right, you’ll attract critics. Someone once told me that we have a choice to make. We can either be criticized or be ignored. If we’re being ignored, we’re invisible. That’s not good for any business.

The alternative is to not only expect criticism, but to welcome it as a positive sign that we’re no longer being ignored. Don’t set out to attract critics. Set out to be useful and worthy of attention. But see criticism as an inevitable part of becoming visible and successful.

Note: Here’s why people criticize you and how to deal with it.

Once you know what’s involved, building a valuable list is pretty easy.

And the rewards are huge

Picture this: Just imagine what a difference it would make to your business, if you were in regular contact with thousands of prospective customers. Not via advertising, which is usually seen as an unwelcome interruption. But via a subscription to your content, which people proactively requested because they WANT to hear from you. It’s almost impossible to overstate just how valuable your subscribers are.

The opportunity is amazing. And it’s right in front of you. Right now.

You deserve clients like mine

May 20, 2020 by Jim Connolly

My clients are amazing.

In fact, they’re totally and utterly amazing.

I’ve loved serving my clients for over 25 years. And I respect them. Every single one of them.

Why?

Because they’re not like the average business owner. That’s why their businesses succeed, when the average business fails in the first 5 years, or worse; slowly fails to deliver the results they need for decades.

My clients want to succeed, but they know that DIY marketing can only take them so far. So they choose me to be a part of their success. For which I’m eternally grateful.

The biggest accomplishment of my career, is nothing I myself have done. It’s that I get to spend every working day, with inspirational, smart, courageous people, helping THEM achieve. Imagine that: Every day since 1995, being fortunate enough to do something I love, with amazing people I admire and respect.

You deserve clients like mine.

How to work with totally, utterly amazing clients

Here are a few useful pointers, based on what I do.

Before I work with a client, I always speak with them to determine if we’re a great fit. I only suggest we work together and explain how my service works, after I’ve established I can definitely improve their results. I strongly recommend you do the same.
Only work with people you instinctively trust. If they lose your trust, fire them. Fast. By the way, I’ve only done this once in 25 years, because I take time to make sure we’re a great fit, first.
Treat different clients differently, based on their unique needs. No two clients are the same, so adapt to their specific wants and requirements.
Resolve to do everything possible, to help them succeed. I’m talking about going WAY above and beyond the claims you make in your marketing. For example, when appropriate, I connect my clients to my contacts, opening up possibilities they’d never dreamed of. Do the same. All or nothing. If you can help, help. Period. If you don’t trust your clients with your contacts, you should seriously reconsider who you’re working with.

And always follow the golden rule… care more about your client’s success, than you care about your own success.

You’re only as good as your last performance

May 18, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I want to share maybe the most powerful mindset in business with you. Because when you understand it, it boosts your productivity, increases your confidence and supercharges your results.

It’s simply this: “You’re only as good as your last performance”.

Here’s how it works.

Why this mindset is so powerful

By learning from your last performance, your road ahead is always filled with potential. Always filled = never-ending. And never-ending potential is just another way of saying endless potential.

It gets even better!

Because you’re always free to bury an unsuccessful last performance, under a better performance, you can destroy the fear of failure from holding you back.

Here’s an example of how I embrace this mindset.

When I publish a blog post and find it didn’t resonate with my readers, (it bombed) I don’t just leave it there.

I understand that “you’re only as good as your last performance”. So I learn from my last performance, make improvements and replace it with something better.

I check things like the subject, the message, the conclusion, the clarity, and the relevance etc.

My NEW last performance is then an improvement. The previous performance is history. And knowing that if I get it wrong, I can always perform better next time, I’m free to work without fear. That’s huge. Because it’s exactly that kind of fear that holds people back from doing their best work.

In short: This mindset gives you the freedom to produce marketing (or do pretty-much anything), without the fear of failure crushing you.

When you embrace the idea, that each performance is an opportunity to improve, and that a bad performance can be buried under a great one, you’re free to blow the lid off your potential.

You’re only as good as your last performance in business

Here are a few real-world examples, of the way embracing this mindset helps business owners.

If your last public speaking opportunity didn’t go as well as you’d hoped, learn from it and make your next performance better. Because that’s the talk, which people will remember.
If your last newsletter or blog post didn’t generate the results you needed, learn from it and bury it under your next, newly-improved performance. Because that’s the one your readers will remember.
If your last marketing exercise failed to get the results you needed, learn from it. Make the required improvements. Then bask in the success of your newly-improved marketing performance.

As you can see, the idea can be applied extremely widely. This gives it the flexibility to help you in many of the most challenging areas of your business.

Embracing this mindset frees you to give the world a massively better (and always improving) version of you and your work. Oh, and just watch what it does to your results.

Knowing that you’re only as good as your last performance, list some past performances, which you’d love to replace, with better ones. That’s a great place to start.

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

Stay safe.

Just a quick reminder

May 14, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Remember.

You’re never more than one idea away from a life-changing breakthrough.
And it’s never been easier to put your ideas into action and show the world. YouTube gives you a free, global TV channel. WordPress gives you a free, global publishing platform and Gmail gives you free, global message distribution.
Whatever problem you’re facing right now, has already been overcome by countless other business owners. This means the answer you need is already out there. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Just try looking in better places or asking for some informed help.
Thanks to social networks, you can listen to your marketplace and find out exactly what they want. This means you can develop a product or service, knowing in advance that the demand will be high. No more guessing. And that means way, way less risk.

There are very real commercial challenges out there right now. No doubt at all. But it pays to remind ourselves that we have opportunities to overcome them, which previous generations of business owners couldn’t have even dreamed of.