Of Course No One Is Listening… And The New Tools I’m LOVING WPCP: 162

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Feel like No One Is Listening?

I’ve been there. And I’m going to warn you, this might be a bit of a rant, but it needs to be addressed.

It seems like lately, I’m having a lot of conversations about people feeling frustrated with their business, or wondering “what to do?”  I don’t think this is a coincidence since I feel like I’ve finally gotten clarity around all of this myself. The thing that boggles my mind (and this isn’t a judgment because I did the exact same thing), is that when we’re TOLD what will change things and make the difference, we do nothing about it.

Even if the person who is guiding us or helping us is walking the walk, has actual REAL LIFE evidence that what they’re telling us works. We still don’t listen! We are crazy creatures.

Before I dive into this any further, let’s dispell the myth once and for all:

Building an online business takes time and work, just like any other business.

Exciting, isn’t it?

NO!

That’s the problem with us… the basic, boring response of doing the work is NOT what we want to hear. This is the internet, after all, things are supposed to be MAGICAL here, right? It’s all supposed to be easy.

The problem with easy is that it’s subjective.

First, let me tell you that I will take building an online business over working a job any day. After having spent 20+ years in retail management, where I was on my feet all day (in dress shoes mind you, dressed up since I was the manager yet I still had the pleasure of being an extra pair of hands on a daily basis), and two bunion surgeries and plantar fasciitis later, that this beats doing that all day long (and now that I’ve stopped doing service work it’s that much better).

I get it that not all jobs are physically laborious, but we’re not digging ditches or sitting in traffic for 2-3 hours a day (another reason I need to move out of the Bay Area in a couple years). I get that some of you may have day jobs too, so I’m not poking at you here, I’m simply pointing out to people that don’t appreciate how much easier it is to work for themselves.

Yes, there are struggles, challenges, money stress… I’m not negating that.

But there’s like this idea that this is all smooth sailing.

This rant was brought on by an email I read this morning about someone feeling unhappy about their business. They had debated even continuing (this is a successful marketer), then realized they wanted to do things their way. They were tired of launches, fancy sales copy, marketing tactics, etc.

Before I tell you why I think this is hogwash, let me say that what came through loud and clear in this email to me was that this person was TIRED. More than anything, they need a break. Some time off, a little space, and probably some simplification in their business (see what 14 years of therapy with an amazing therapist can do for you?).

Now let’s get into why this is hogwash…

No-one is making you do ANYTHING you don’t want to do!

Don’t want to do a ‘launch’? Great. Don’t.

Don’t want to write ‘fancy copy’? Cool, write whatever you want.

Want to be more authentic and do things your own way? Sweet, no one is stopping you.

BUT… and you knew this was coming…

You STILL have to market your business! If you had a brick & mortar store, would you be whining about having to market it? You better be good at writing copy (fancy or otherwise) if you’re going to do any marketing. You’re going to have to SELL… that’s all marketing is, selling.

The methods used for marketing online are obviously different (can you imagine trying to do a 4 series video launch for a product offline?), but they work.

The frustrating (and kind of exciting) thing about the internet is that things change so fast. Just when you think you’ve figured something out they change the game on you.

Or have they?

What if you took the time to (you knew this was coming), master the fundamentals?

Practice writing, creating content, connecting with people, understanding how copy works, doing the opposite of what you’ve been doing because it hasn’t been working? This isn’t about the online space… at the end of the day, it’s about what is going on in your head.

It’s time to re-frame what you’re doing

It hit me today that I’ve been doing my ‘daily email’ (I’ve stopped calling it my ‘almost daily email’ since it’s rare I don’t hit Mon. – Friday now) for a full YEAR already.

A year you guys!!!

Good on me!

Was I excited about doing a daily email? NOOOOOO… I was terrified. But I was more frustrated than I was terrified, so, game on. I was sick and tired of feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere or I was going to be stuck in the ‘how to do this’ space, teaching people for free for the rest of my life and having to continue service work that didn’t excite me, but was bringing the income in (I think that must be one of the longest run-on sentences I’ve written in a while).

I stopped bitching and I got PISSED.

Just because someone has succeeded does not mean they’re better than you. They just did the RIGHT work. They dug in and produced, they launched, they sold, they emailed, they ran ads…

[clickToTweet tweet=”Just because someone has succeeded does not mean they’re better than you. They just did the RIGHT work.” quote=”Just because someone has succeeded does not mean they’re better than you. They just did the RIGHT work.” theme=”style6″]

And when things didn’t work?

They just dug deeper into what happened. They didn’t decide their business wasn’t worth doing.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a few assumptions if these strike a nerve with you then good. Now you have an indicator of what you need to work on (don’t shoot the messenger… this is about you, not me):

• You’ve been in perpetual ‘finishing’ mode on multiple projects forever
• You talk about things you should be doing, but aren’t, so when you talk about them with your audience you’re feeling out of alignment
• You keep ‘looking’ for answers outside of yourself (someone else’s course, product, or service)
• You spend your time on things that appear to be work but are more like painting the outside of a car that never gets an engine
• You’ve made blanket statements about not being good at content, writing, email, copy, selling, video, podcasting, etc. (and never try to get better at these things)
• You have preconceived ideas as to how your business should ‘appear’ (professional)
• You create things or decide to create things because you see other people doing that so THAT must be the answer

How’s that been working out for you???

So when you DO decide to step it up and do the RIGHT work, it’s going to feel like no one is listening.

Because they aren’t.

You have to give things time to grow and gain some traction. Which means, here comes that icky “C” word… (get your head out of the gutter)… consistency!

BOR-ING. I know.

But it WORKS! (I have gone completely loco with the overuse of all caps in this post, I know).

It’s going to take time for people to start responding, engaging, sharing, commenting, whatever.

I don’t think I got any responses the first month I did my ‘almost daily email’… I just got people unsubscribing (which felt horrible at the time, now? Meh, moving on). They hadn’t heard from me in a while or didn’t remember who I was. I do that a LOT now. If I’ve subscribed to something and I haven’t heard from the person or company to the point where I’ve forgotten who they are? I unsubscribe. It’s not personal, but they’re out of sight, out of mind.

When I launched the podcast 161 episodes ago do you think I had over 30k people listening a month? I was pumped to see 200!

Both of these examples are two things that I wasn’t doing, didn’t think I was good at (O.K., maybe not the podcasting…. I was a speech major and had a little bit of experience speaking and training, so I thought it would be fun), but saw other people doing and getting good results. I LIKED getting daily emails, I liked how they were written, I enjoyed the story element. Which is why I decided to try it. It resonated with me.

The same is true of podcasting. I have always been a HUGE consumer of audio content. I knew what I liked, what I didn’t, and why I wanted to start the show (more fun). I knew going into it that it was a commitment, but I didn’t think about where I would be 4 years out… I focused on one show at a time. Period.

When it comes down to it this is simply about course correcting. Try something, measure it, adjust it, try again.

O.K., this rant went on way longer than I expected. Let’s move onto a couple new tools I’m loving.

I’m not going to go into a ton of written explanation with these here, but I will give more detail in the audio (and not just because I want you to listen, which I do).

Thrive Architect

HOLY MOLY! Finally! The Thrive Content Builder has gotten a complete overhaul and it’s AWESOME! It’s not called Thrive Architect and is publicly launching on August 29th (in case you listen to this before the launch). I think I may test doing some posts with this too, it looks pretty amazing.

Get Thrive Architect Here

Convert Pro Opt-in

This is a lead gen opt-in plugin made by the creators of the Ultimate Beaver addon plugin and it’s great. I love the styles (complete drag & drop builder for opt-in forms) and the display logic. I’ve only played with this briefly but I dig it.

Get CovertPro Here

The NEW WebinarJam Platform

Part of me feels really guilty trying this out, but it seems too good to be true. I feel guilty because I really like Demio for webinars and want to support what they’re doing. However, the new WebinarJam isn’t built on Google hangouts (hallelujah), has live streaming built in, white board features, live chat, upload presentations, and a ton of other amazing features as well. Because I purchased WebinarJam at a lifetime price a few years back, I only have to pay $19.99 a month for this (which is about $60 cheaper than using Demio and BeLive). If you aren’t a previous WebinarJam customer, it’s still only $40 a month, which is pretty amazing.

I’ll be testing that next week so will share some results of how that goes.

Get the all NEW WebinarJam Here

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