Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

How to start 2021 with the right mindset and stay on track

by

Today, I’m going to share an extremely powerful business idea with you, along with an amazing technique to help you grow your business exponentially in 2021 and beyond. This information could be exactly what you and your business needs, so please take time to read it.

Let’s go.

Every business owner experiences highs and lows. Seasons of success and seasons of frustration. Here’s something we know for sure: As you face the opportunities ahead of you, your overall results are determined by how you navigate these ups and downs.

When times are good

When things are going great it’s easy to feel confident, calm and assured. And with those positive feelings guiding your decision making, you perform at a far higher level. You also inspire confidence in others and find it easier to motivate them to hire you, buy from you or recommend you.

After all, when was the last time you hired or recommended someone, who you had no confidence in?

You’re on a roll.

When times are tough

It’s harder to feel confident when times are tough. You’re no longer on a roll. Your focus naturally switches to the problems in front of you. You consider the worst case scenarios and how you would cope. A negative cycle is created and stays in play, until you regain control of your mindset.

Usually, this mindset shift is the result of an external factor.

Today, I’d like to show you how I intentionally, deliberately and VERY quickly get my mindset back on track. It’s a technique that you are able to use and because it’s based on facts that you know are 100% true, your mind is fully able to accept it.

It’s based around your past experiences.

Consider the following 5 facts for a moment:

  1. You are just one email away from a great client inquiry. Just as you were the last time it happened.
  2. You are just one idea away from a life-changing breakthrough. Just as you were the last time it happened.
  3. You are just one phone call away from converting an enquiry into your most valuable client ever. Just as you were the last time it happened.
  4. You are just one decision away from an amazing opportunity. Just as you were the last time it happened.
  5. You are just one conversation away from your largest ever order. Just as you were the last time it happened.

NONE of those are Pollyanna thoughts or wishful thinking.

They’re facts.

Facts you know to be true, based on what you have already experienced.

These real world opportunities and many, many others can happen for you at any time.

The key is NOT to just wait for things to improve. You can greatly increase the speed and frequency of these opportunities, when you focus on the steps required to make them happen, rather than focus on what you fear.

Here’s how I did it.

  • When I came up with this idea, over 20 years ago, I needed to regularly remind myself of those 5 facts.
  • So, I wrote them down and kept them visible.
  • I read them and reread them.
  • My mind quickly accepted them, because each one is provably 100% true.
  • After a while, I didn’t need to intentionally remind myself. My mindset automatically worked from that spectacularly effective perspective.
  • It’s been that way ever since.

And that’s what I want for you my friend.

I want you to give yourself the best possible advantage to absolutely thrive in 2021. I want you to succeed more than you’ve ever succeeded before.

And I want you to achieve beyond anything you’ve ever achieved before.

How to be a successful, serial entrepreneur

by

Wherever you are right now, whatever your past, you can be a successful entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur.

First, let’s get the serial entrepreneur myth out of the way

Look around any business network and it won’t be long before you find people, calling themselves serial entrepreneurs.

They’re everywhere. Or so it appears. However, as is often the case, all is not what it seems. In fact, 99.9% of the people I see calling themselves serial entrepreneurs… are not.

They aren’t even entrepreneurs.

They are serial starters!

Allow me to explain.

Serial entrepreneurs or serial starters?

Serial entrepreneurs: These rare people build a series of successful businesses and fully realise the potential of each business, before they move on. A well known example is serial entrepreneur Ev Williams. Ev founded Blogger and sold it to Google for millions, then he co-founded Twitter and then, the hugely successful Medium.

Serial starters: These are the people we see everywhere, who start a series of enterprises, yet never successfully finish developing any of them. They lack the commitment shown by entrepreneurs. So when the going gets tough, they get demotivated and quit. The vast majority of self-proclaimed serial entrepreneurs fit in this enormous group.

This begs the question.

Why are serial starters so common?

It’s extremely easy to start a new venture. It’s exciting. It brings motivation with it. It gets them up early in the mornings and keeps them up late at night. Everything is new. A blank slate. A new beginning. Endless possibilities.

Then, after a while, the real work begins. Not the new enterprise, shiny work. The real nitty-gritty work:

  • The sales calls.
  • The rejections.
  • The unreturned mail.
  • The broken promises from those who said they would help.
  • The cash flow problems.
  • The hard knocks.

As the shine wears off, the momentum drops for the serial starters. So, they look for the next big thing, rather than finishing what they started. The cycle repeats unless they summon the grit to make it to the finish line.

More about grit than money

You don’t need to start of rich, to be an entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur. You do need grit though.

Yes, some entrepreneurs, such as Gary Vaynerchuk, inherit a multi-million dollar business from their parents, and can use that wealth to get all the additional investment they need and branch into other enterprises. However, most of us start off with little more than an idea, grit and commitment.

Ev Williams, who I mentioned earlier, is a textbook example of starting without money. Like most entrepreneurs, he had to do it the hard way. No wealthy parents. No million dollar assets. No easy way to access the financial investment he needed.

Ev was so broke when he started Blogger that he was living on a friend’s couch! He’s now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

History shows us that when it comes to business, money is less important than grit. Remember, Steve Jobs came from a blue collar family! The key is to decide what you want and then commit to doing what’s required, to make it happen.

It’s that simple. And that hard.

The key to getting your business noticed

by

marketing leadership

I want you to imagine you’re in a huge stadium. There are 70,000 people there. And every single one of them is dressed in bright yellow clothing.

Then a guy walks in who’s dressed from head to foot in red. Immediately, everyone notices him.

  • He stands out, because he’s not like all the others.
  • He attracts attention, because he’s different.

Here’s why this matters to your business

If you want to get noticed, you need to be willing to stand out. To be visibly, measurably and meaningfully different from your competitors. That’s how you attract attention.

The typical small business unintentionally does the opposite.

They offer the same kind of services for the same kind of fees to the same kind of people. They have the same kind of website and the same kind of marketing messages. And all because they use the same kind of general marketing strategies as their competitors.

It just doesn’t work

Why?

Because every time you use a general marketing strategy or a general business development idea, you’re doing what the masses are doing.

So, you actually make your business less visible.

Less visible? How can marketing make you less visible?

Instead of helping you gain the attention of your marketplace, generic marketing acts as camouflage. You become like one of the 70,000 people in that stadium, dressed in yellow… wondering why you’re not getting noticed or attracting attention.

You need a more effective marketing strategy than that. You need marketing, which takes your business from the background and moves you to the foreground. You need marketing, which gets your business noticed by the right people and motivates them to buy from you or hire you.

Anything else will make your business less visible in 2021. Fortunately, it’s totally avoidable, so long as you shun generic marketing and embrace a meaningfully different approach.

How to be in high demand and earn the highest fees

by

workaholic, love work

We know why the most successful businesses and freelancers are always in high demand. Its the same reason they command the highest fees.

They provide something of value, which is in short supply.

We also know why the average business isn’t in high demand. It’s because they provide something, which is in abundance.

Here’s the thing. It’s not enough to work hard, work smart and care about your clients. Most of your competitors already do that. To think otherwise is to underestimate your competition. And that’s a big mistake.

To be in high demand and earn the highest fees, you need to embrace the tricky stuff. The things that are in short supply, because they’re too challenging or uncomfortable for most business owners.

This includes a willingness to:

  • Set higher standards than your competitors.
  • Do work that’s meaningfully different.
  • Initiate.
  • Be there for people when they need help.
  • Encourage others.
  • Connect people.
  • Treat different customers differently.
  • Make promises and keep them.
  • Inspire your customers, your team and your marketplace.

Is this easy? No, of course not!

Here’s a better question: Is it worth it? Yes, absolutely!

You see my friend, the very fact it’s so challenging is why it’s so rare, in such high demand and so valuable.

How to be totally and utterly irreplaceable

by

How hard would it be for one of your clients or customers to replace you with an alternative provider?

I was thinking about this yesterday when a salesman came to my home. He asked if he could quote me a price to look after the trees and hedges, which surround all 4 sides of our house. I said that I wasn’t interested. He then said that if I told him what my current guys charge, he’d beat their price. I explained that I still wasn’t interested. I thanked him for his time and he left.

Just think about that for a second. Imagine being so valuable to your clients or customers that they send competitors away, uninterested in hearing about their lower price.

Being irreplaceable

If the salesman had been a little wiser, he’d have asked me what made my current provider irreplaceable. If he’d asked, here’s what I’d have told him.

The team who look after my hedges and trees have worked for us for years. They know exactly how we like things. They are extremely reliable and when we needed them in an emergency, they responded fast; removing a tree that had fallen down in a storm. They provide a great service, which they are very well paid for.

They’re happy and we’re happy.

They’ve made themselves irreplaceable by building trust. They’ve earned that trust by doing great work over the long haul and being extremely reliable. I have recommended them dozens of times over the years to friends, all of whom are equally delighted with them.

There are 2 pieces of gold dust in the previous paragraph:

  1. The best way to become irreplaceable is to earn trust. It was during our first year with the tree company that they came out to remove that tree, which was blocking a road on a dangerous corner. They were here in 40 minutes and charged us their normal rate, when they could have exploited the situation. Their attitude to service has remained every year since.
  2. When a provider earns our trust and does great work, it’s easy to recommend them to our friends.

Clearly, every business owner should strive to make their business irreplaceable. It improves customer retention, whilst also generating a regular flow of word-of-mouth referrals.

How do you become irreplaceable?

It’s not about one huge action. In the above example, my tree problem gave them an opportunity to shine, but it was followed by years of excellent customer service. It’s certainly not about being the lowest priced.

It’s about the daily interactions we have with our customers and our marketplace. It’s the compound effect of many positive experiences. We earn the position of being irreplaceable over the medium and long haul. Every interaction should be viewed as an opportunity to increase our value to our customers.

That’s how we earn (then re earn) the position of being irreplaceable. Yes, you need to re earn the position, because when you act like you’re permanently irreplaceable, you’ll soon be replaced by someone who out manoeuvres you.

Let’s look again at my opening question. Ask yourself, how hard would it be for one of your clients or customers to replace you? If you don’t like your answer, do something about it today… and every day, until they’d have to be crazy to switch to another provider.

How to convert attention into paying customers

by

marketing foundations, touchpoints

So, you want to get your products or services noticed? Of course you do. You work hard, your business is excellent and more people need to know about what you do.

However, before you start working on how to get noticed, you’ll need to put some foundations in place. Otherwise, you’ll blow a ton of money, waste your time and miss out on some potentially great opportunities.

With this in mind, consider the following.

  • Do you have an accurate way to measure the number of prospective customers or clients who notice you?
  • Have you determined the number of people you need to notice you, in order for your business to flourish?
  • Are you able to accurately track whether you are getting noticed by the right people, or just a poorly targeted mix?
  • When people notice you for the first time, do your *touchpoints build an image of trust? *Touchpoints are the places where a new customer encounters you, such as your website, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, your office, your store, your advertising, etc.
  • Will new prospective customers find your marketing message compelling enough, to motivate them to come back for more, to contact you or to place an order?
  • And have you made it extremely easy and intuitive, for them to recommend you to their friends and contacts?
  • Do you have a robust strategy to obtain their permission to stay in touch with them?
  • Are your systems (online and offline) regularly tested, to ensure they’re working, or are you losing prospective customers or important data, without even knowing it?

Those are just some of the things you need to look at.

The key is to make sure you don’t simply get noticed, but that you get noticed by the right people. And that when these prospective customers notice you, you’re ready for them. Anything else and you’re leaving money on the table.