I love social media. And I love try­ing and test­ing new stuff. If there’s some new social media tool, web­site, or com­mu­nity, I’ll be one of the first ones to try it out.

But there is a limit. And I think we need to be care­ful. Because social media is like a drug. It can become dan­ger­ously addic­tive. It can even kill your business.

Social media seems to be the cur­rent fad. Everybody’s in on it like it’s one big cock­tail party you just don’t want to leave.

But the way social media is cur­rently being touted, hyped up, and used (or should I say, abused), is rem­i­nis­cent of some­thing that hap­pened way back in the 90s.

(I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

Yes­ter­day, I watched a bril­liant video by Loren Feld­man. Feld­man has a tell-​​it-​​like-​​it-​​is style. While he may be blunt and use strong lan­guage to voice his opin­ion, he is never afraid to voice it. Regard­less of what I think of his style, his video res­onated with me.

In it, he drove home an impor­tant point. I believe what he talked about is not only right, but also some­thing we need to real­ize and become wise about before we need­lessly kill our busi­nesses. And that’s ignor­ing the most impor­tant place on the web…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“If you like to gam­ble, I tell you I’m your man. You win some, you lose some, it’s all the same to me.” — Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades”

I’m get­ting fed up.

It seems to me that prod­uct launches of late have less to do with sub­stance and strat­egy, and more to do with tricks and tac­tics. Blame it on the econ­omy. But I think we need to blame it on some­thing else. Some­thing more sinister.

In fact, have you not noticed that a grow­ing num­ber of mar­keters are urg­ing you to join their “club,” as if it’s some secret, back-​​of-​​the-​​room, clan­des­tine poker game?

Speak­ing of poker, busi­ness is some­what of a gam­ble. And admit­tedly, gam­bling can be prof­itable. Very prof­itable. After all, the more you gam­ble, the greater you win, right?

But do we really need to gam­ble with our customers?

What about the long-​​term? What about build­ing busi­nesses rather than just mak­ing money? What about invest­ing instead? What about invest­ing in your cus­tomers that can pay some­times 10 to 100 times more over the long run?

For exam­ple, some­one men­tioned a new pay-​​per-​​follower pro­gram on Twit­ter. (Ugh. How is that any dif­fer­ent than from spam­mers buy­ing bulk email lists?) I responded, and this pretty much sums up my phi­los­o­phy — it should be yours, too — with:

“I’d hate to treat my cus­tomers like pris­on­ers or prostitutes.”

Read the rest of this post or share it »

What’s the most impor­tant part in copy­writ­ing? Is it the head­line? The bul­lets? The ben­e­fits? The tes­ti­mo­ni­als? The guar­an­tee? The offer?

Nope.

While all impor­tant, none of these are as impor­tant as this sin­gle yet pow­er­ful ele­ment. It trumps all the oth­ers by a long­shot, and it’s the one ele­ment all copy must absolutely have to suc­ceed. Once I tell you what it is, you’re going to smack your head and say, “Of course!”

But, it’s not what you think — at least, not in the way you think…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Drop Your Goals (And Man­age Your Life) by Michel Fortin is a book writ­ten over a decade ago as the author was going through some tough times.

The result is a pow­er­ful look at how to stop set­ting goals and to start look­ing at your pri­or­i­ties and val­ues instead — called “guides” rather than “goals.”

It’s a bit spir­i­tual and meta­phys­i­cal in nature, so please read with an open mind. How­ever, the strate­gies it offers are real and practical.

I highly rec­om­mend that your read this book, which is brought to you free, and start using the G.O.A.L. method out­lined in the book, with tem­plates at the end.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“Com­mit­ment is what turns a promise into real­ity. It is the words that speak boldly of your inten­tions. And the actions that speak louder than words. It is mak­ing the time when there is none. Com­ing through time after time after time, year after year after year. Com­mit­ment is the stuff char­ac­ter is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily tri­umph of integrity over skep­ti­cism.“
– Unsourced

“Patience is bit­ter, but its fruit is sweet.“
– Anony­mous

You may have heard of Thoreau’s advice, “Do what you fear and the death of that fear is cer­tain.” I fig­ured that becom­ing a sales­per­son was the best way to fight my fear since rejec­tion is com­mon­place in sales. In the begin­ning, though, I cer­tainly was no sales super­star. Work­ing solely on com­mis­sion and with no income to show for, I filed for bank­ruptcy (one of two, if you recall). You might say that I became what my father pro­grammed me to believe.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“If you don’t attempt to get over your doubts and fears, you’ll never dis­cover how won­der­ful it is to live with­out them.“
– Colin McArty

“Of all base pas­sions, fear is the most accursed.“
– William Shakespeare

Beyond the unknown, you may have other kinds of pho­bias you will need to deal with. All fears, great or small, pro­hibit you from reach­ing your poten­tial because they cre­ate self-​​imposed lim­i­ta­tions. Since fear is gen­er­ally the prod­uct of a low self-​​esteem, the most effec­tive way to deal with your fears is to improve your self-​​esteem.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“Often the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful man and a fail­ure is not one’s bet­ter abil­i­ties or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a cal­cu­lated risk — and to act.“
– Maxwell Maltz

Real­ize that what­ever you choose to focus on affects your qual­ity of life, or what Zig Ziglar calls your “stan­dard of life,” and not just your stan­dard of liv­ing. For instance, if you focus on the future by set­ting goals, you may be forc­ing your­self to remain in your comfort-​​zone and prob­a­bly with­out ever know­ing how far you can really go.

Jim Rohn said, “To know how far we can go is to risk going too far.” To reach your poten­tial there­fore, you will unques­tion­ably need to con­front risks. They are inevitable. They are unavoid­able. You sim­ply have to take them if you want your suc­cess­ful­ness to man­i­fest, and there’s no way of tip­toe­ing around it.

Read the rest of this post or share it »