Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

How to get the energy required for business success

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get excited, get energized, business success

I have a question for you today. An important question.

The question is this: Does your business excite you and energize you?

Well, it should do.

In fact, it HAS to!

Seriously.

Here’s why excitement and energy are essential

It’s impossible to build a truly successful business, unless that business fills you with energy and excitement.

Think about it.

  • The energy is what keeps you moving forward. It’s the essential fuel source behind every successful business owner.
  • The excitement is what fuels the energy. It’s also what the marketplace needs to feel, whenever they have an encounter with you or your business. It’s highly infectious. It’s what inspires people to hire you, buy from you and recommend you.

And that energy can be yours. If you want it.

Choose energy. Choose success!

You can choose to either create an inspirational business, or carry on like 99% of small and medium-sized business owners, in a business you love, which doesn’t love you back.

Small business owners suffer more stress, work longer hours and work harder, than they would do if they were an employee. They work themselves harder than any boss would, with none of the perks of being a salaried employee.

And that’s nuts!

New clients often tell me they would see other business owners, who were brimming with energy, enthusiasm and ideas, and wonder how those other business owners managed to be so motivated.

Usually, they blame themselves for not being a very self-motivated type of person.

Thankfully, they’re 100% incorrect.

ANY business owner can become highly motivated and fully energized. However, it isn’t going to happen while they’re working in a business that’s zapping their energy or failing to inspire them.

Business owners are intelligent people. They’re not going to feel highly motivated and energized, working in a business that isn’t fulfilling them.

Clarity is the key

All that energy only comes, when you are crystal clear about what you want from your business AND how to achieve it. This massively improves the way you think and feel about your business. That’s because you know what you want, know how to get it and can see progress toward your dream / goal / target. I see the impact this has on business owners every day. I’m telling you, it’s transformational!

That kind of clarity and direction is all that separates you from those supercharged (and highly successful) business owners.

The challenge you need to overcome, if you want to access that energy and excitement, can be summed-up in one word: Settling.

Settling: The destroyer of dreams

Most small business owners have spent so long with their daily grind, that they unconsciously start to settle for things the way they are. Sure, they hope things will improve. Occasionally, they’ll try something new. But they find themselves with the same core problem. So they (wrongly) blame themselves for lacking the self-motivation or energy.

To turn this around, you must refuse to settle.

  • Stop LOWERING your lifestyle goals, so that they fit around the limitations of your under performing business.
  • Start INCREASING your effectiveness, so your business provides everything you need, and more.

Here’s the best part.

You are in control

You don’t need to settle for ANYTHING.

You’re the boss. That’s the whole point of being a business owner.

You get to build whatever kind of business you want. You choose how enjoyable your “work” is. You get to decide what you earn, where you work, where you live, the number of hours you work and the quality of your clients. You get to choose how interesting and fulfilling your work is.

You get to choose it all, my friend. Because YOUR business is directly under YOUR control.

Success doesn’t care

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success don't care

You offer a great product or service. You’re passionate about what you do. You work hard. And you work smart, too.

So, why are some of your less capable competitors doing better than you?

We know it’s not the industry we’re in, because others are doing great right now. We know it’s not the marketplace, because others are doing great right now. And we know it’s not the government, for the very same reason. So what’s the answer?

Here’s the l-o-n-g answer:

  • They might get the same number of leads as you, but they’re trained at how to turn prospects into paying clients.
  • They may have a better way of attracting more referrals from their clients, contacts and friends.
  • Their marketing messages could be professionally developed, so they get tons more enquiries or leads.
  • They might have developed a massively more compelling reason for people to hire them.
  • They may sell the result of what they do, rather than sell the service they provide.
  • Perhaps they’ve taken time to learn what keeps the best prospects awake at night worrying. And then, marketed their service as the answer.
  • Their email marketing could be expertly created, generating red-hot leads on a regular basis.
  • They might have learned the essential keys to persuasion.
  • They may be building a reputation as problem solvers, and earning the trust of your marketplace, via their newsletter or blog, etc.

In fact, it could be one of over 300 other, proven marketing strategies / tactics. Like those I use with my clients to help them rise to the top of their marketplace, so they have the perfect plan for what they want to achieve.

Note: I talk about it here – and it’s spectacularly effective.

Here’s the short answer:

  • Success doesn’t care.

That’s it.

Here’s why!

Success… and combination locks

If a 2nd rate competitor decides to do the things required for sales success, revenue growth and higher profits, their business will succeed. This is true if they’re less able than you.

Think of it like this.

Imagine a door, which has a combination lock. If you use the correct, 10 number combination, the door will open for you. If I use the correct combination, it will also open for me. That’s because the door doesn’t care. Press the correct numbers in the right order and you’re in!

Business success is the same. If you do the right combination of things correctly, you’ll succeed. That’s because success doesn’t care.

Success doesn’t care. It simply responds to what you do. And dabbling with a combination, hoping one day to get lucky, is a terrible strategy.

He’s after you! And that sounds scary

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writiing short, writing for business

Imagine it.

You find a Twitter account and it has a very short profile message. It’s just 3 words long.

It rather menacingly says: I’m after you!

This was a genuine Twitter profile from a marketing adviser.

So, what happened?

The profile’s owner intended the message to suggest, that he puts everyone before him. However, it read very differently.

His unsmiling profile photo only added to the likelihood it would be interpreted in the literal sense. That he’s pursuing you. That you are his intended prey.

The person in question is one of my newsletter subscribers. He explained that he was trying to write short, having just read one of my articles. Apparently, it was only after he noticed an increasing number of abusive tweets, which made no sense to him, that he figured out his mistake.

He went on to say that the offending profile message had been live for well over a month, and he’s still suffering the reputational damage. (Screenshots of his original profile have circulated in his local area).

Writing short

Writing short is about impact. From a word-count perspective, this means using as few words as required, but no fewer.

And writing for business in general, requires attention to detail. This includes looking for possible misinterpretations. Especially those that could be embarrassing or, as with this case, embarrassing and highly toxic.

Scaling your way to success

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What’s the best way to scale your business for success? 

Here are my thoughts.

marketing tips, Jim Connolly

But first, I have a very quick question for you.

What do the following all have in common?

  • Kindness.
  • Honesty.
  • Caring.

The answer is that they’re attributes that are valued, extremely highly, by everyone. We are attracted to people who are kind, honest and caring. And given the opportunity, we prefer to do business with people (and brands), who are kind, honest and caring, too.

Now. Hold that thought.

Scaling your way to success

One of the BIG buzzwords right now, is ‘scaling’. Business owners are being told that it’s a cornerstone of commercial success. And that the best way to scale their business, is to automate pretty-much everything.

For example.

  • To let AI chatbots handle first-line customer service enquiries.
  • To have call trees handle incoming phone calls; especially customer service calls.
  • To automate their social media accounts.
  • To create impersonal, email / forum-based, drip-fed versions of their services.

In short: To cut back on the human touch as much as possible, whenever possible and wherever possible.

The huge limitation with that approach is clear. Automation software is…. well… software. And as such, is incapable of the human characteristics of kindness, honesty and caring.

The reason for the growth in automation-based scaling, is that it promises a lot and is extremely simple. It requires almost no effort. And it’s sold by the gurus pushing it, as a magic way to cut your overhead back to the bone; both in time and money.

Here’s the snag with automated scaling

As more business owners embrace automation-based scaling, prices and fees in their industries are being driven down and down. It’s a race to the bottom for those who’ve bought in.

Paradoxically, it’s also a race, which no one actually wants to win. This is why we hear these same business owners complaining about attracting fee-sensitive clients and how hard they find it to stand out and get noticed.

They’re discovering that it’s extremely difficult to build a successful business, with the most fee-sensitive clients, wafer thin profits and a customer base who will drop you in an instant, for a lower priced competitor.

Shrug!

Another way to scale… that actually works

While some business owners embrace the race to the bottom, where the winner is the cheapest provider, others have identified a far more profitable way to scale.

It’s a different race. A race to profitability and success. A race, where the winners attract the best clients, work on the best projects and earn the best fees.

You see, it turns out that kindness, honesty and caring, scale. In fact, they scale to infinity. People tell their friends about remarkable service. So, the word spreads. And they remain loyal to providers, who go the extra mile to look after their needs. So, they keep their clients for way, way longer too.

Yes, the cheapest prospective clients in your marketplace will always shop for the bottom dollar provider.

That’s perfectly fine.

Because every marketplace has a large and massively profitable niche, who eagerly pay a premium fee for a premium quality service. People hate automation and only opt for it as a last resort.

And even the bargain basement crowd seldom remain with an impersonal service for long. They often realize their cost-cutting error, once they’ve tasted the frustration and expense, of suffering with a problem, which can’t be resolved by automation software and requires a person. And there’s no person available.

So my friend, I suggest you scale your business for kindness, honesty and caring. It’s an excellent foundation on which to build a sustainable, valuable business.

Years spent in an industry does NOT equal experience. Here’s why!

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What is experience

Recently, I’ve been mindful of the title of the classic Jimi Hendrix album, Are You Experienced?

That’s because over the past couple of weeks, I’ve encountered lots of examples where people have incorrectly been labelled as experienced or inexperienced.

I think it’s time someone called out the automatic assumption, that experience can be measured by age. Or that experience can be measured by how long someone has been in a particular line of work.

As no one seems to have stepped up, I thought I would.

Time absolutely does not equal experience

In business, experience isn’t magically acquired with each passing day.

That’s to say, if someone spends 5 years repeating the same old mistakes from year 1, learning nothing new, they don’t have 5 year’s worth of experience. They have 1 year of experience, repeated 5 times.

Commercially valuable experience, (the kind this post is about), is gained through the acquisition of relevant knowledge and feedback, which the person then works with, in order to be better informed and make better decisions.

They’ve increased the depth and width of their relevant knowledge.

They’ve increased their commercial value to their marketplace and their business.

They’ve become commercially experienced.

Young and highly experienced

Here’s a great example of someone who’s young, but very experienced. I work regularly with a young guy who’s the CEO of an amazing technology company. He’s eager to learn. He loves to test and measure ideas. And he applies what he has learned in order to improve.

He’s VERY successful.

And despite his age, he’s very experienced.

The exact opposite

Conversely, I hear regularly from business owners, who’ve been in business 20 years longer than my client, but have a fraction of his experience. They have a few years worth of experience, repeated 10 times.

They’re still repeating rookie errors, really basic mistakes, which have lost them and cost them a fortune.

In summery

There are many amazing, relatively young business owners out there. Great providers, who care about what they do and who deliver as promised.

The same is true of many older business owners. (I am one of them, after all).

If we attribute someone’s commercial experience to their age or their time in business, we’re likely to make some lousy decisions. And the same holds true if we erroneously attribute experience to ourselves.

Publish the process: A quick note about notes

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Jim Connolly notes

Here’s one of those publish the process posts I promised. The photo above is an example of how I take notes at my desk, when using pen and paper. I thought I’d share it today, along with some tips, and a look at how I take notes.

Some notes on note taking

You may notice it’s written in capitals. I do that deliberately. I write extremely fast in cursive, but it can be really hard for me to accurately read what I’ve written afterwards. Writing in capitals slows me a little, which also seems to result in better notes.

Although I used a fountain pen for this note, I use ballpoint pens the majority of the time. Also, when I use ballpoints, I tend to use different pigments in the note. I always have a BIC 4-in-1 (red, green, black, blue) ballpoint pen at my desk and in my bag.

I only write the main points down to begin with. This lets me get the big picture on the page, while it’s still vivid in my memory. And I peg the detail onto the main points afterwards. It works for me.

If you’re wondering, those particular notes were for a blog post. I added the detail to them later, then typed it up into WordPress for the blog.

That notebook was really cheap. I only use cheap notebooks now. I used to invest in expensive, branded notebooks ones, but found zero additional value. I find some people treat their notes like works of art. Not the content of the note. Just the overall design! Many of my best notes were scribbled onto a napkin or a scrap of paper. And some of those scribbles are still perfectly readable, 30 years later!

Almost all the handwritten notes on my client sessions are written into an iPad Pro, using the Apple Notes app. I have my pre-session notes typed up into the app. Then, notes from the session are quickly jotted down onto the same document. I switched to this approach around a year ago. It’s been a huge productivity win.

I’ve found that the key piece of advice regarding note taking, is to find what works best for you, and not to follow every so-called breakthrough in note taking. It’s the value of what you capture that matters. Not the tools. Not the design.

I hope you found something useful there.