Jim Connolly Marketing

How to stop stalling and do your best work

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how to

No, it doesn’t really matter what brand of computer you choose to work with. The same is true of the software you use. Leonardo da Vinci changed the world, writing with a quill.

No, it doesn’t really matter how you plan what you write. Best-selling author John Boyne, like many, doesn’t plan at all. He doesn’t even know where the story is going, until after he starts writing it.

No, it doesn’t really matter how inspired you feel. You don’t wait for inspiration to appear… you command it to appear.

What matters

What matters is that you get started. So learn to identify your stalling tactics. Then, call them out for what they are.

Now you’re free. Free to focus on doing your best work in 2017 and beyond.

12 Ideas to make 2017 your best year ever

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marketing blogs, marketing

Let’s get started.

  1. Yes, outsmart your competitors. However, make sure you outcare them too.
  2. Think big. Average ideas bring average levels of motivation. Big ideas bring big motivation.
  3. Be a source of encouragement. Highlight people’s strengths rather than their weaknesses.
  4. Take a 30 minute walk (or longer) every day. Here’s why.
  5. Eat right. A high performance machine requires high performance fuel to operate optimally.
  6. Be a student. Not a follower. The difference is huge.
  7. Decide to solve trickier problems. There’s a direct link between what you earn and how difficult it is to replace you.
  8. Deliver on your promises. This is a great way to build a world class reputation.
  9. Fail more often in 2017 than you did in 2016. Why? Because if you’re not failing often enough, you’re sticking to things you already know and no longer growing.
  10. Decide to personalize your business, so it’s uniquely yours. One of a kind. Rare and valuable.
  11. Start your projects with the end in mind. Get crystal clear on your outcome, before you start the work.
  12. Be fast to forgive others. While you’re holding a grudge, they are out dancing!

I hope you find these useful. More importantly my friend, I hope you put at least one of these ideas into action.

Your recipe for success

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marketing tips, marketing advice

Achieving the success you want in 2017 is a relatively simple process. It’s a matter of doing the right things correctly.

It’s a little like baking a cake

If someone gave you the recipe for a delicious cake and you followed it closely, you would end up with a delicious cake.

No one would claim you were lucky to have baked the cake so well. It would be the natural end result, for someone who has studied the recipe and followed the instructions.

Growing a successful business works in a very similar way. To succeed, you need the correct recipe, though we call that recipe a strategy. And this is exactly why so many business owners screw it up. Instead of following the right strategy, they dabble.

Could this be happening to you?

If your business isn’t growing the way you want it to, here are some useful points to consider. It will help you identify if you need a better strategy.

  • What recipe for business success am I using, to ensure I’m doing the right things, correctly?
  • What experienced, highly credible source gave me the recipe for business success, which I’m currently risking my entire future on?
  • Was my recipe developed for me and my unique needs, experience, resources and goals – or am I dabbling with general info I grabbed from webinars, blogs or books, etc?
  • If things are not working out, how much more time and money am I going to waste, before I invest in the help I need?

Get the exact recipe for success, which you and your business need. Then follow it. Don’t waste another year dabbling, hoping or worrying.

The bottom line: When you’re rowing your boat in the wrong direction, working harder simply moves you further and further off target.

Stop offering freebies. Seriously. Stop it!

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marketing tips, marketing blogs

Time. It’s our most valuable commodity. So why is it that business owners tend to massively undervalue it, by offering freebies?

Freebies send a toxic message

Offering free consultations is an extremely risky marketing strategy. That’s because so-called free offer marketing carries a damaging subtext.

It tells people that you are under-employed. That you have too few clients and too much dead time. This causes prospective clients to wonder why… why you’re not attracting enough new clients or enough paid work from delighted, ongoing clients.

Free consultations, free assessments, free advice, free 30 minute evaluations — they all have one thing in common. FREE.

When you use free as bait, guess what you attract?

Yes, you attract freebie hunters. These never-to-be-clients are attracted to freebies, like moths are attracted to flames. Freebie hunters generally fit into one of the following:

  • People who have no intention of paying anyone for advice.
  • People who have no way to pay because they’re broke.

Here’s the thing: Neither of those groups provide a fertile marketing environment.

Yes, it’s entirely possible you will attract a paying client by offering freebies. However, you’re unlikely to attract the kind of client you want, deserve or need.

Tip: Read this, it will show you how to market your services effectively, by giving value away.

Your January opportunity

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marketing blogs, marketing help

We’re just a few weeks away from January. And January is an extremely important month for your business.

Why?

Because January is when your most savvy competitors will launch their New Year marketing campaigns. It’s the time of year when people are most motivated to embrace change. Making your clients or customers much more likely to switch providers.

You can treat this as a threat or as an amazing opportunity.

To make January work to your advantage, I’d like you to ponder the following 2 questions:

  1. What are you going to do, to ensure you retain as many of your clients in 2017 as possible? Remember, marketing is not only about attracting new clients. Marketing is also about client retention. In fact, everything your business does is marketing. Read this to see why.
  2. What are you going to do, to benefit from the January opportunity? You can choose to be one of the savvy business owners, who benefits from a valuable surge in new clients. You can start 2017 on a real high. You can create a wave of momentum to carry you through the year ahead.

I strongly recommend you put a plan in place, to cover both of those opportunities.

Don’t let January just happen. Get intentional. Consider ways to engage with all those prospective clients or customers, who will use January as a catalyst for change. Position yourself as the obvious choice for them. And look for ways to render greater value to your existing clients in 2017. Then communicate all that extra value to them in the weeks ahead.

Get this right and it will provide you with an opportunity to strengthen your core client base and build upon it.

That’s a super-effective way to create unstoppable momentum in 2017.

How to unlock your amazing creativity

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marketing help, marketing blogs

Would you like to become a creative thinking powerhouse? Would you like to be able to come up with answers, to the challenges facing you and your business? If you would, then today’s post may be just what you need.

I used to work with a guy who had a thinking cap. He said that when he needed to be creative, if he put his thinking cap on, it would help him generate the ideas he needed.

Did it work? Yes. Absolutely!

But here’s the thing: If you wore his thinking cap, you may not find it so effective. That’s unless you too believed all the things he did about that old cap. Otherwise you’d quickly figure out that it was, in fact, just a normal cap and that he generated all those ideas himself.

Similarly, if you used the same tools as me for generating ideas (coffee, long walks and music), you’d be unlikely to get the same creative flow that I get from them.

It’s not platitudes: You truly are unique

You think like no one else who has ever existed. Your unique mind and all those experiences you have lived through, have created an astonishing, unique, creativity machine.

If you want to tap into that creativity, do what feels most natural to you. It may involve a thinking cap. However, it’s just as likely to involve meditating or using a mind map or getting on an exercise bike or dancing to James Brown!

Sadly, many people wrongly believe that they are not creative, because they followed a creativity strategy from a book or a course, which didn’t work for them.

Ironically, the very fact that generic “how to get creative” bullshit doesn’t work for you, only confirms how original your own mind truly is!

Here’s a suggestion: Try 1 new way to inspire your creativity each day. Rule nothing in or out (and that includes having fun!) Then, put the ideas that worked together, to build YOUR very own creative toolbox.

Tip: I recommend you read this, What Is Inspiration?