“Suc­cess is always tem­po­rary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your char­ac­ter.“
–Vince Gill

Today, when one is con­sid­ered “suc­cess­ful,” that per­son is usu­ally labeled as such accord­ing to some exter­nal cri­te­rion. This is only nat­ural, for along with the major­ity of the human race you have the ten­dency to judge a book by its cover. What you per­ceive or observe through any of your five senses is often­times inter­preted as real­ity or truth. And the prob­lem, how­ever, is that when you dis­tin­guish that which is suc­cess to you, you are only scratch­ing the surface.

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I couldn’t talk about this when I first learned about it, but now that it’s pub­lic I wanted to pass the info along.

You may or may not know Julie Perry.

She’s a very dear friend of mine, a well-​​known Inter­net mar­keter, and an entre­pre­neur. We con­stantly see each other at sem­i­nars and always have a great time. She’s always laugh­ing, fun to be with, and a great person.

If you can’t pic­ture her, to help you here’s a photo of the both of us — you might have seen her at Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars, yourself:

She’s known for her love of boats. She’s writ­ten a book on yacht­ing, and she’s also the host of The​Boaters​.tv, a web­site for yachters and boat lovers.

Now, the sad news…

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The most com­mon mis­take new­com­ers to busi­ness make is to think that by expand­ing their port­fo­lio they will secure more busi­ness. Con­versely, they think that by nar­row­ing their mar­ket they will also nar­row their chances of get­ting more busi­ness. In either case, noth­ing can be fur­ther from the truth.

A man­age­ment con­sul­tant who I believe had a knack for human resources also offered book­keep­ing ser­vices, think­ing that hav­ing more to offer will keep her busier — she then won­dered why she wasn’t get­ting any work!

The truth of the mat­ter is the fact that spe­cial­iz­ing and nar­row­ing your focus as much as pos­si­ble will increase your like­li­hood of get­ting more business.

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A mis­take busi­ness­peo­ple often make is when they try to sell their com­pany directly in every com­mu­ni­ca­tion they pro­duce. (I’m refer­ring to the idea that they try to sell their com­pany as being merely open for busi­ness, also called “insti­tu­tional adver­tis­ing,” and not direct mar­ket­ing, which is different.)

Insti­tu­tional adver­tis­ing (or what I call “blind brand­ing”) will draw up imme­di­ate clients. When adver­tis­ing, they spend hoards of cash on repeated, slick and enter­tain­ing ads. When mar­ket­ing to peo­ple for the first time, they blab on until the cows come home. When send­ing out infor­ma­tion, they send beau­ti­fully designed pack­ages that make ship­ping crates look like a joke!

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