Part 26: Sightseeing on the Road to Success

Why is it that human nature so often makes us take the most difficult route to where we want to get to?

I’m thinking about business in general and Internet marketing specifically, but the more I think about it, the more it seems to apply across the board.

For example, in Internet marketing, although there are literally hundreds of different ways to make money, most people struggle. But every once in a while someone comes along who succeeds effortlessly and makes a killing. How come?

Then that successful person writes an ebook on how they ‘Twittered for Gold’, or ‘Craigslisted their way to success’, or ‘Made Five Figures With Video’ or whatever the latest thing is – and everyone with half a brain reads the book and realizes that nine times out of ten there are no big secrets being revealed – just plain common sense.

[Sorry about the extreme length of that sentence - I could seem to find a way out of it!]

You see, I think that there are people – most of us, most of the time – who get confused because we think that ‘it’ should be complicated. So we look for complex solutions, convoluted processes and contrarian systems. Something inside of our brains won’t accept that success really is simple – we have to introduce layers of complexity. And in so doing, we focus so hard on the process that we lose sight of the destination.

Its like driving – as long as we have a map and know where we are heading for, navigating the route is easy: each new road we take is a step towards our target. But as soon as we stop to think ‘oh, this is a pretty road, let’s see where it leads to’ our focus shifts away from where we want to go and on to where we are now.

The result is we get lost.

Psychologists and animal behaviourists tell us that one of the main difference between humans and animals is that our brains have evolved to be able to imagine a future. We have areas in our brain that can extrapolate from our past experiences and our present condition and create an image of the future. Animals, it seems, either lack that facility, or have it to a much lesser degree.

Somehow, though, when faced with business decisions, many of us suppress our ‘thinking forward’ skill and rely on the far more basic magpie mind (ooh, look at that nice new shiny thing…).

That constant jumping from one good looking idea to another draws our focus away from the destination and firmly on to the process.

Destination oriented thinking is absolutely crucial to your success – and mine. I don’t claim any superiority here – I’m just as likely to be sidetracked and diverted as anyone else. Maybe more so.

But recognizing the problem is a big step towards dealing with it.

So, how do those people who write the books find the ‘secret systems’ that they sell – the ones that, as I said, when you read the book you think are actually blindingly obvious (except that you didn’t think so before you read the book)?

The answer is simple to explain but quite difficult to put into action.

What these people have that most of the rest of us don’t is the ability to focus on what it is they want to achieve, and then to look at whatever process they have decided to study (be that Craigslist, Squidoo, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Article marketing, or any of a hundred other methods of online marketing) with an eye to finding out what people who are already successful are doing.

There are very few original thinkers – and most of those who can and do come up with truly original concepts are too busy profiting from them to want to teach them to other people (even if they have the communication skills to do so).

No, the ones we end up learning from are the people who make it their business to understand what works. The people who have an innate ability to see below the process and to understand the route. In other words, they don’t focus on the shiny diversions, they focus on the entire map.

There is good news and bad news.

The bad news is that if you want to be a teacher, you will have to learn the difficult skill of seeing an entire journey and understand how each part inter-relates to each other part. It is a skill that we can all learn, but one that is difficult because it requires enormous focus.

The good news is that if ‘all’ we want is to be a success, then our job is really much easier. We have to learn to follow a map and to ignore the pretty roads we’ll see along the way.

Sightseeing has its place, but not on the road to success.

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A very quick message today – but one that can have a massive effect on your business.

About 8 years ago, a book was published that, it is true to say, has influenced more copywriters online than any other. The book, by Dr. Ken Evoy and my old friend Joe Robson was called ‘Make Your Words Sell’. It was – and still is – the ‘bible’ of online copywriting.

Joe, who is a very talented copywriter, and Ken, spent 8 months writing, polishing and perfecting the book. Way back then, ebooks weren’t just thrown together in a few days, they were crafted until they shone!

‘Make Your Words Sell’ is the basis upon which many well-known copywriters learned. And it is recognisably the nucleus of many high price copywriting courses that you can buy today.

Yet, ‘Make Your Words Sell’ was never expensive. As far as I know it was always priced at around $30 – and has sold thousands and thousands of copies.

Ken Evoy has now decided to make the book available for free. That’s right, it now won’t cost you a penny.

Just go to http://myws.sitesell.com/products43.html and download your own copy.

But just because it is now free doesn’t mean you should treat it lightly. If you are sensible you’ll value it above many of the books you may have that cost hundreds of dollars – the information and teaching it contains is really that good.

Get your copy, read it, no… study it … and then put its golden advice into practice.

This is one book that WILL make a huge difference.

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Part 25 … Online Experience for Offline Profits

I have a bee in my bonnet.

I’m on a crusade and I don’t even own a cape.

Everywhere I look there are businesses who have had websites built for them by flashy high-priced designers who are saying ‘We’ve got a website, but quite honestly, it doesn’t do much.’

What do they expect?

A website isn’t a family portrait that you go to a studio to have taken and then proudly look at on your mantelpiece.

A website should never be built ‘because we’d like one.’

A website should and must be an integral part of your business and a fundamental element of your marketing strategy.

See that word ‘strategy’. It’s important.

I have nothing against design and designers (please don’t send me hate mail!). What I do object to is the blind leading the blind.

Unless you have a clear and defined strategy for the Internet side of your business, your website might as well be a flyer tucked at random into the 20-volume encyclopedia in your local library.

Nobody will see it – and the rare person who does will have no idea what it is there for.

In my offline life I deal with businesses who are often in this position. They jumped on the website bandwagon a few years ago, spent huge sums on the latest (then) flashy intro screens and wacky graphics, approved everything because it ‘looked’ so cool and then waited.

They waited for something to happen and it didn’t.

Nobody flooded them with orders. No search engines bothered to list them. No customers said how good the site was. No-one in the business had any idea what to do about it and so the site floundered.

And the CEO is now convinced that it was all a waste of time and effort.

And it was.

But it needn’t be that way if they had bothered to think like marketers and entrepreneurs and not like over-awed design junkies.

I believe that all of those bad websites can be turned around. Sure they will need to be redesigned and rewritten (at a significantly lower price than they originally cost, I expect). But with the application of sound marketing ideas – and a clearly defined Internet strategy – ANY business can and should benefit from an effective online presence.

A hard-working website can be your window on the world. It is such a shame that so many companies keep the curtains closed.

There is an enormous opportunity for you here. When you have built a few websites for yourself and learned the ropes of Internet marketing, your level of knowledge of what makes a website work will be orders of magnitude greater than the general person in the street. And for local business people who are much more interested in the day to day running of their businesses than in learning new skill about the Internet, you will be a shining star. You will literally be their savior.

A book I read (and highly recommended) recently tells you all about how to turn your online experience into offline income. It is called Offline Gold, by Andrew Cavanagh and it is well worth studying. There really is a fortune to be made in helping offline companies make better use of the Internet – and you could be perfectly placed to grab your share. http://www.kickstartdaily.com/offlinegold/

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