Guilty, until proven innocent
With business owners entering service agreements - it’s mostly a case of guilty until proven innocent - they’re going to assume you CAN’T help them until you can convince them otherwise.
This is why creating marketing that educates, adds value, and ultimately builds a Know, Like, Trust environment is crucial to co-creating a long term client relationship.
I have yet to find sturdier foundations to build from.
Yet, most businesses will focus on everything but this…
...attributing basically no time to the messaging or the bigger picture and making just enough sales to torture themselves in a perpetual cycle of stress, burnout, and the residual fatigue that comes with it.
They might be making a living, but they’re certainly not creating a life.
Read More
Sprinting in the wrong direction
“The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.”
Read More
Great lesson from a doctor
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
- Dale Carnegie
Replace friends with clients and the result is the same.
The truth is, for most, business is a game of survival.
In trying times, the conversation becomes less about how to deliver win-win scenarios to create the life I want, and more about...
“How can I make just enough to cover my expenses so I don’t have to work for someone else?”
Read More
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat
I believe the notion of ‘being busy’ is an epidemicWe are so concerned with the validation of ‘doing’ that we forget to take stock and understand the cause and effect relationship in our marketing activities.
Read More
The fastest way to burn money
Attrition & Churn
Two curse words in the world of business.
It refers to the group of people who no longer do business with you.
It’s the opposite of client retention, and it kills our growth opportunities.
For any business owner that is across their numbers, we all know that the most expensive client is a new one.
Yet, we all get tied up in the world of ‘new’
New Leads
New Sales
New Clients
Once you factor in the costs of acquiring, onboarding, and acclimatising new clients to your business - it ain’t cheap.
It’s on our best interest to continue to add value, so we can have that reciprocated on our bottom line - Lifetime Value is where the true profits lie.
Read More
The newsletter is dead
Marketers ruin everything…
When something works, they all jump on and flog it until it doesn’t work anymore.
This has lead a lot of people to say email marketing is dead.
However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
There is SO much gold that can be mined from your database.
But first, we need to set fire to ‘the newsletter’
THAT’s dead.
Click here to read about the four things you need to understand to start converting customers with your emails
Read More
Ego is the enemy
EGO is the enemy of marketing.
OBJECTIVITY is our dearest friend.
When people have experienced some level of success, they become less objective and more stuck in their ways.
Opting for the rinse and repeat method, then blaming ‘the market’ when they start to have diminishing returns.
They substitute their own judgement instead of what the market wants
(which does adapt over time)
Read More
The science of intentional 'eureka' moments
Time apart is just as important as time together.
Read that over twice.
It sounds counter-intuitive - but there is a universal truth to this, and I relate this to how we think, work, and perform.
There’s no question that running a business is a 24/7 gig - even if we’re not ‘on the tools’ delivering client work, we’re thinking about it all the time.
It’s hard to focus beyond the next step (or the closest fire), but I have a tactic that can pull away the white noise.
We have to disconnect so we can reconnect, and it’s a strategy that a mentor gifted me that completely flipped my world on its head.
I’ll explain…
Read More
Consumption vs Creation
Just a few weeks ago, I presented to a room full of business owners looking to grow their business.
I asked for a show of hands for who has a social media account for their personal use?
All of them raised their hands
Next I asked;
“Who thinks they spend too much time on their social media account?”
Every hand remained raised.
“Who actively uses social media to promote their business?”
About 20% of hands stayed up.
“Who is actually getting results - enquiries, leads, meetings, and sales?”
Just one hand remained.
This room is just a microcosm of the market at large - the reality is that most people are spending time mindlessly consuming on a piece of technology that could literally change the trajectory of their business.
Read More
Rollercoaster Marketing
Sound familiar ?
If not, we can graph out the profits of most client based businesses from January - December and you’ll see the pattern in the line.
Except, this roller coaster comes with a higher price than theme park admission.
I’ll give some more context.
When times get tough and customers are scarce they throw everything plus the kitchen sink into their marketing efforts.
If they’re lucky and manage to gain a bit of traction, the pipeline will momentarily fill up, some contracts might get signed, and a natural ascent follows.
When this finally happens the typical war cries start emerging
"I’m so flat out right now"
"I just don’t have time for anything"
"The weeks are flying by"
They convince themselves that they’ve now done the work, the books are getting full, and all we needed was that initial push…
Everything should just follow through now, this is our new reality and we’re always busy.
Except, they forgot what made them busy in the first place.
Read More
Perception = Reality
Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception within a person.
Most people create products and then try and find clients when it’s entirely the other way round.
See, the product is not the hero of the marketing journey, it’s the customer.
Read More
Your customers don’t want to read line items
That is…
Your client’s don’t really care to read through a list of features, they are driven to purchase for the benefits
It can be an uncomfortable truth that we need to accept as Business Owners, but to move forward, we need to have a clear answer to why people should care about us and our business.
To further understand what drives purchase and loyalty, we need to acknowledge we are all in the Product AND Service Industries.
Our Product is our client’s Outcome (what they are BUYING from you)
Our Service is our client’s Experience (how we make them feel)
Read More
The road to nowhere
If you’ve been in business for more than a minute, you’ve undoubtedly heard people talk about the hamster wheel…
…the treadmill
…the road to nowhere
This is a common complaint from a lot of business owners I meet; they’re exerting time, energy, focus, resources to the point of exhaustion.
In the game of marketing (and business), trajectory is everything
So how do you know if you’re on the right path?
Read More
The Principle Of Priority
It always interests me when people where ‘busy’ as a badge of honour, excusing a lack of output on time, when it’s really a matter of priority.
I should know, because, I was the biggest proponent of using the language myself.⠀
I was ALWAYS too busy for anything...
Funny how what frustrates us the most is typically a mirror of our own fall downs and insecurities.
A big goal for me this year was to shift my language from that of ‘busy’ to that of ‘priority’
Read More
Lessons from Kobe Bryant
I heard this incredible story when I was walking my dogs the other day.
I was in the middle of a podcast binge with Kyle Kingsbury, and in this particular episode, he was chatting to Alan Stein Jr, a world-renowned performance coach that has worked with the likes of Kevin Durant and some of the highest performers in the NBA.
But it was the story of Kobe Bryant that really struck me.
Read More
The silent killer
The human mind is complex
In so many ways, it’s beautiful.
Every day, I am constantly blown away about what we are capable of creating to move us forward, individually and for our global community.
However...
I believe our greatest gift, can also be our greatest curse.
We are wired to create more problems to solve.
Read More
Our current trajectory is more important than our current results
Case in point;
Imagine you are flying from Perth to Brisbane.
They’re lining up the plane on the runway, but if the pilot adjusts the nose just a few degrees south, and follows the path in a straight line - you will land in Sydney, instead of Brisbane.
Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff—the nose of the airplane moves just a few metres off —but when magnified across Australia, they end up hundreds of kilometres apart.
That’s if our focus and intention is just a few degrees off.
Read More
The living dead
The living dead;
Businesses that try to ruthlessly acquire, without strategies to re-engage and retain their customer base.
These owners typically experience a glass ceiling, with revenue that ebbs and flows unpredictably, finding it harder to break through to the next level.
Read More
Something different (but super important)
“Follow effective action with quiet reflection.
From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action”
- Peter Drucker
This is one of my favourite quotes, and a timely reminder that we have to slow down to speed up.
It’s beyond marketing, and business - and taps more into how we approach our week.
How we do one thing, is how we do anything, and I’ve realised if we truly we want to grow [marketing, business, personal], then we need to allow time to pause, and reflect.
This has a trickle down effect across every aspect of our lives.
Read More
The platform is not the problem
As a society, we are glued to our devices.
Hour by hour,
Minute by minute,
In fact, the majority of people scroll a further distance using their thumb on the phone, rather than their feet on the pavement.
True story.
Yet, business owners will blame the tool.
Read More
