From 11 Years as an Entrepreneur, 6 years running a marketing agency, and spending over $100k on my education I discovered that success leaves traces.
These 15 Keys for Long Term Sustained Success in Business and Digital Marketing are key principles and tools that we use and our clients use to dominate markets and build successful profitable businesses that defy the norm.
I urge you to invest 15 minutes of your time and watch this video in its entirety. Give yourself a score out of 15 and identify any techniques or principals that you are not ‘living’ as part of your business life, as these are opportunities for leverage and growth.
These are things I think are really important. 15 keys for long term sustained success in business and digital marketing. Some of these things you’ll go, ‘Yeah, I know that. I know that. I know that one. I hadn’t heard of that.’
But I think to know and not to do is not to know. Does that make sense? You might be knowing it, but if you’re not living it and breathing it and implementing it, then you’re don’t really know it, in my opinion.
Like some of these things we knew them for many, many years but we missed a lot of opportunities because we weren’t implementing them. I think these are right it down and then sort of look at it afterwards and give yourself a score out of 15 maybe in your, you don’t have to share that with anyone, how you’re tracking. Then what of these are things that you should be implementing in your business and in your life?
The first one and definitely one of the most important is the Pareto principle, the 80/20 principle. What’s the 20% of things that you can do that will give you the 80% of results? We’ve run all our businesses this way. Very, very important, and it’s cumulative as well.
Within an 80/20, for example, you’ve got this many prospects. You’ve then got that many customers, so which is your 80/20. Then within that, there are this many customers who are happy to spend a lot more. Then there are this many customers who are happy to spend a lot more again. That’s sort of thing. But it also applies to your work, so what are the 20% of the things you can do that will get you most of the way along?
When we were setting up these event series, that sort of stuff, we made a whole bunch of little mistakes along the way. We were just implementing with speed and I’d get people writing to me on Facebook, ‘This audio has got, this video has got shit audio’ and all that sort of stuff. They were right, but what they didn’t see was behind the scenes. We had a job on Fiverr and we were getting a guy to record a professional audio of it and all that sort of stuff.
We got it out there and we got it happening and then we came back and fixed it afterwards, if that makes sense. 80/20 is really, really important.
Number two: Million-Dollar Mindset. I ran into Pat Mesiti the other day. Has anyone run into Pat before? He’s a mindset guy, really dynamic type character. I ran into him, we were speaking at the same hotel in Brisbane, actually, the other day. I said, ‘I quoted you in Sydney’ and he goes, ‘whoa, what did you say?’
It was one thing that I learned from him and it has always stuck with me and he said, ‘You can’t build a million dollar business with a two dollar mindset.’
Which was very, very, important. Because if you look at people that win a million bucks, they’ll then go on and lose it over time. For me, I would rather build my own million dollars than get given 10 million. Poor people would think, why is that? That’s crazy!
The thing is, if I’ve built my own million dollars then I then know one, how to keep it, but then there is, I know how to do it again. And the second one you can do faster and that sort of stuff. I think with these mindset has definitely something everyone needs to work on and I’m still working on mine, as you’ll see later on in the day. But I don’t think anyone ever gets there and can say, that mindset thing, it’s definitely a journey. You just keep working on it.
Has anyone here studied NLP in your linguistic programming at all? A couple, if you get the opportunity, and I strongly recommend you do, study NLP at some stage. Just go away for a weekend course and whatever. It’s sort of complex to explain, but sort of just really shows you how your brain works; how your thoughts work and that sort of stuff. You’ve got the conscious part of your brain and you’ve got the subconscious part of your brain. If you think about it like an iceberg, the conscious part is really that bit at the top. Everything below it is the subconscious. For example, the subconscious is how you’re driving the car, talking on the phone, eating a burger, and yelling at the kids at the same time.
You know, that sort of thing, and you’re not even really thinking bout where you’re going. Your subconscious brain, you actually stop developing it at about five. If you don’t learn this stuff, you’re effectively letting a five year old run a major, major part of your life. It’s definitely worth working on.
And there are other things that we teach in this space as well, for example; ants. Everyone gets ants. Ants are like annoying, negative thoughts. For example, like a business owner entrepreneur, you might think, this is too hard, or I’m not good enough or they’re heaps better than me or whatever that is. Everyone has those sorts of thoughts at some stage. Just being able to take that and look at that thought and say, “Is that helping me or hindering me?” If it’s not helping me, then being able to do what’s called a switch. Get rid of it, or being able to take the picture of that thought and push it off into the distance and make it smaller and smaller. As you push things away into the distance they have less power. That’s just a couple of examples that we need to do in the mindset space. I can’t emphasize enough how important that is.
That leads into another thing that is, the elephant in the room. From a mindset point of view, some people are very worried about being sold to or all that stuff about money. Can we have a quick 30-second conversation about that? Today some people will be thinking, what is this bastard going to sell me? What we’re going to do today is teach you a truckload of stuff. You’ll have a really good to do list. Some people will boot a to-do list and will go home and implement that. Other people will write a to-do list and do nothing. Then there’s other people who take that idea and want to buy speed and accuracy and may choose to do some work at the end. I was going to make an offer later on in the day for people who wanted to do some work with us, is that ok?
All right. Cool. Number three is Modeling. Modeling, again, I learned from, I studied NLP from Richard Bandler, who is the co-founder of NLP. What this is talking about is if someone in your industry or someone is already doing it really well, then you maybe don’t reinvent the wheel. Maybe you have a look at what they’re doing. Model it and then test from there. Same as you’re going to see things from me today, how I do facebook and all that sort of stuff. Don’t just say, what is that Greg guy know? That is rubbish. And just try and do it your own way. Try out my way first, implementing that, and then tweaking it and changing it and trying and getting better results. Modeling is really important, and it helps with speed.
Ok, so number four is the Formula for a Winning Offer. I was always taught the formula for a winning offer was the psychology and maths, and it is to a degree. I think it’s more two-part psychology and one part math. The maths bit is talking about, and remember I mentioned it with property books before? We were selling a 30-dollar product and we’re buying them for 15, 20 bucks. We’re making sales but when it got to the end of it, what were we really taking out of it? Not much.
You got to make sure that the maths work in your business. If your maths aren’t working, you’ll see a whole bunch of ways later of how you can make the math work better. Psychology is really about, who is your market and what do they really want? Then giving them an offer that works for them. A winning offer is two-part psychology and one-part math.
Ok, the formula for winning online. These are definitely the two most important things you need to know which is, traffic and conversion. Nearly everything comes down and fits in traffic and conversion. It’s by no accident that our agency is a traffic and conversion agency. They are the two things that we really set out to master and I think we’ve got a fair way along with that. They’re things you need to learn online.
Number six is Direct Response versus Brand Advertising. Brand advertising is getting your name out there, which is good. There’s definitely nothing wrong with building your brand but, if you copied Coca-Cola and just tried to do exactly what they’re doing by putting billboards up and all that sort of stuff you’re going to go broke in business pretty quick.
If you do direct response, which is setting up campaigns that have calls to action saying call this number today or click here to xyz. Then you track and measure this one did X clicks, Y leads, and Z sales, then this one did something similar. Then cut the losers and run the winners long. I’m a big believer in that, run the winners long and cut the losers short.
No marketing exercise is ever a failure it’s just an experiment. The quicker you can experiment and get to the answer, the quicker you can cut any wasted cash. You really want to learn direct response marketing.
I found in my first five years, and maybe even still more, the more I learned about direct response marketing the more money I made. It was directly related to that. I learned it in this country from a guy called Mal Emery. I was lucky enough to work with him for three years to run his whole internet side of his business. He paid me to basically do split tests, a couple of hundred split tests in his business and figure stuff out. Very clever guy, and he learned it from a guy called Dan Kennedy in the States.
This is probably the most important marketing formula that I’ve ever learned, which is problem, aggravate, solution, prove, call to action. What this is about is, you can use this in anything whether it’s a sales letter, you can use it in any video that you write.
What’s their problem? Who’s the market you’re talking to and what’s their specific problem. How do you aggravate that so they know you’re speaking directly to them and their feeling the hurt? You really want them that. Then what’s the solution? How are you going to solve that for them? From there, how do you prove, now, so this might be testimonials, etcetera, that your solution works? Then call to action
Remember this is direct response. What do we want them to do next? Problem, aggravate, solution, prove, call to action. Next time you write a script for a sales video or that sort of thing, go back and have a look at it again and say, is it doing that?
If you look at any infomercial, for example you about to-, instead of buying yourself an ab circle pro at two in the morning to work on your oblique’s, look at it with a marketing eye and watch what they do. Problem, aggravate, solution, prove, call to action four times in 22 minutes.
All right, speed of Implementation. We missed a whole bunch of opportunities over the years because we thought that’s great opportunity and then while we were still talking about it, other people went and implemented it and ran with it. I can see a few people nodding your heads. Success follows speed, there’s no doubt about it. This ties in with that 80/20 of just get it up. Get it out there.
There’s a really good book called “The Lean Start Up” and it talks about M.V.P. Minimum Viable Product. Get up there a minimum viable product. Make sure it’s good, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be great to sell. Then tweak it and test it once you’ve got it up here and you’re already testing and you’re getting real data and feed back. Not just what I think sort of thing.
If you look at these websites, these are some of the biggest website in the world; Pinterest, Dropbox, Tumblr, Youtube, etcetera. You can see none of them really look that flash when they first went live.
They got it up there they made it happen and they tweaked it and made it better over time.
Number nine is Leverage. You want to get leverage in all aspects of your life. Whether it’s down to a cleaner at home that can help you, just so that you’ve got more time to work on your business. Or an assistant, for example, I have an executive assistant in the Philippines.
How many people have a VA or EA? A couple. As an entrepreneur that’s one of the best thing that you can do. I used to recruit for personal assistant and that didn’t go so well for me in the Philippines. I would get people that didn’t have initiative. Then I heard this little nugget which was recruit an executive assistant.
This is someone who is used to working at that CEO, general manager type level, and it’s got initiative. Now I’ve got an amazing lady, Beige, in my office and she’s in the Philippines actually. She does all my emails, my calendar, she publishes our magazine, she does video editing for me, and she does Adobe, InDesign, and all that sort of stuff.
Just amazing, amazing employee for a thousand bucks a month; two hundred fifty bucks a week to do all that sort of stuff. We’ve even got it down to now to I ride my mountain bike, I live right by the beach along on the coast, and we both dialed in to GoToMeeting. She tells me this person wants to know that. I tell her what I want to her back. She just hates hills, because I’m not the fittest guy and I’m doing the whole [heavy breathing] sort of thing and she thinks, ‘Ok we’ll just wait a second’.
I’m leveraged, that’s one example. You might also get financial leverage, using other people’s money, getting investors, crowd funding, that sort of stuff, leveraged by developers. Any sort of leverage that you can get in your business.
Number 10 is List and Community; building a database of your prospects and ultimately your customers. You want to build your database of customers as quickly as possible. Then creating a relationship with them and building repoire and trust and ultimately you want them to come to want to do business with you. They already like you know, you trust, you, maybe even love you, like in the case of the man who offered me the man love earlier in the week.
List and Community, customers not prospect, this is one that I learned really just in the last year. I learned it from the digital market guys whom my high level coach at the moment in the states. I’ll teach you later in the day the concept of the trip wire, which they’ve implemented in their business and I’m implementing in mine now. What it’s focusing on is rather than just building a database of leads, they’re building a database of customers, getting them in line, getting them a seven-dollar intro, that sort of thing.
The reason why is, what they’re finding is they ran a $15 million of advertising to come up with this. Was that, people who are already customers were 10 to 11 times more likely to become customers again then people who weren’t.
They would were rather a list of a thousand customers than 10,000 leads, because of what they are going to do.
So you want customers not prospects.
Reputation management and integrity. I think this is really a key area. I was just talking to a guy in Sydney last week and he was talking about stuff that happened five, six, seven years ago. He was saying to me, ‘can’t believe you knocked this opportunity down. I can’t believe you didn’t do that.
There were opportunities, yeah, where I could have made a lot of money but I don’t feel I could have done them with integrity because I didn’t really, for example, believe that I had enough runs on the board to teach that to other people, or have it proven enough or that sort of thing, at the time.
In today’s social age, I think that’s more important now, where bad press can spread so fast. Regardless of these social aspects of it, running your business in such a way where you really care about your reputation and you’re not out to burn people is a great way to go. Google built their whole company based on one word, which was, ‘relevance’. We try to do ours based on one word, which is ‘integrity’. Try and do everything with integrity. I think it really matters and it helps to build raving fans, not just happy customers.
All right, number 13 is Goals. One thing we’re saying is, if you don’t have a plan as to where you’re going you’ll just meander along. You might not really get there. Not just a goal in your head, you really sort of need to have a written goal. If you can have it on your board, or on your wall which is even better, it doesn’t matter if your goal changes is three or six months time and you want to sort of scribble it out and change it. At least you’ve got something that you’re working towards. The way your mind works is you visualize it and you start to plan to get there. You really need to have written goals.
Alrighty, number 14 is Impact/Ease. This is a business tool that we learned from some great business consults friends of ours, Andrew and Daryl Grant. What this is talking about is when you have multiple opportunities in front of you, which you often do as an entrepreneur, which one do you choose? How do you know what’s the best way to go?
If you look here there’s two axis to this. There’s the impact axis and we’ve got ease. So if we implement this idea in my business, how much impact is it going to have and if I implement this idea in my business how easy is it to implement?
For example, we’ve got three or four opportunities available to us. Opportunity one might be really easy to implement, but not have much impact, so it would be down here. We might have another one which might be hard to implement, but would really have a lot of impact, so it would be up there. Or ideally we want to refine things that are really easy to implement and can have a high impact and be up here. That would tell us we want to focus on these ones first and then it’s up to you whether you want to go those ones or those ones. You want to avoid those down here, those money pits.
Can you see how important that would be? We use that, daisy and Jewels and I, we use that in this next week for planning some stuff without business. We had sort of six opportunities in front of us. We were talking about it, and talked about it for 10 minutes and then thought, hang on we’re wasting our time. Let’s do an impact/ease grid.
We did that and within one to two minutes, this was literally at an airport, within one to two minutes was really clear to us what we needed to do next. That was the impact/ease grid. This also ties in with your 80/20, so they’re related to each other. It’s not really much of a principle, but it’s a business tool and I think it’s great.
Then number 15 is the Power of the Coach. I’ve mentioned how much I’ve invested in coaching over the years. It’s been important to me because now I’m very close to being in a position in my life where I can be considered free an get to the point where I can work when I want rather than having to work all the time.
In this example, this is Sean Foley who’s Tiger Woods coach. He’s helping him, advising him on his long game, and also sleeping with less women because it was becoming a disaster for him. Tiger was having a great time, but it was a public relations disaster. The power of a coach. . . All right so that’s 15 things. Think about those and say, ‘what I am I living and doing and could I improve it?’