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Business Hyper Growth Activity #2

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This is part 2 in the 4 (+1) part series on the 4 essential activites you need to focus on when starting & growing your business as a solopreneur. Part 1 of the 4 essential business hyper growth activities.

Activity #2 is ‘list-building’ … but it’s not

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard it a million times:

You must build a list

well, are you?

In theory, it’s really (I mean: REALLY) simple:

  1. put an ‘ethical bribe’ in front of prospective clients
  2. if they’re interested, they give you their email address in exchange for said ethical bribe
  3. you start mailing them cool stuff and make sales

and yet, despite this incredible simplicity …  if you are like far too many others … you’re not, right?

The reasons are pretty almost always the same. Things like:

  • “I don’t know what to ‘bribe’ them with“
  • “I don’t like this ‘bribing’ thing, sounds ‘sleazy/salesy’ to me“
  • “I don’t know when to send content, and when to sell” (or: “when (if at all) do I start selling?“)
  • “what if they don’t like what I’m sending them/what if they hit the spam-button/what if ….“
  • (and seemingly everybody’s favourite) “I don’t know what to email them after they sign up“
  • …

Now, there’s little point me saying: “but look, it’s easy, just do it“, or “here’s a list of 17 different ‘bribe’ ideas“, or even “here’s a set of email templates you can use to follow up”

(if that were useful, people wouldn’t be asking those questions, because answers to all that stuff already exist).

My view is that the real problem (and hence the source of the solution) is the focus on ‘list-building‘.

If you tell your brain to go “build a list”, it’ll look for ways to “build a list”. (see top of the page for the recipe)

But, a “list” isn’t really what you’re after, isn’t it?

Really, what you’re after is a way of communicating with one or more prospective clients.

The (email)-list is just the vehicle in this case.

So, instead, we want to tell our brains to find ways of communicating with prospective clients.

And as communication involves at least 2 parties, and at least one of them has to be willing to listen …

… I’ll borrow from Seth Godin, and simply suggest you view the whole ‘list-building-dilemma’ from the ‘permission-based marketing’ perspective:

ask yourself this:

what has to be in place so prospective clients give you their permission to email them on a regular basis?

(Obviously,  the aim is to get to “Permission 2.0” – we want to get to the point where they actually WANT to get your emails)

But the overall mission is now pretty simple:

when deciding on how to ‘build your list’, keep asking the question above:

what needs to be in place, …

what needs to happen, …

what do they need to be sure of …

… so they WANT to give me their permission?

(not only to get the ‘bribe’, but also to keep hearing from you)

Time for a bit of DIY-thinking:

what, in YOUR opinion is THE #1 question people ask themselves when they first encounter your ‘ethical bribe’?

(assuming they haven’t heard of you before)

To make sure you’re actually thinking about it, I’m putting in this random video of a new plugin I’ve got coming out in the next couple of weeks – which happens to be rather useful when building targeted lists;-)

Watch it, then think about the previous question some more, and only then keep reading!

 

Right, the answer to the biggest question people have (when they don’t know you) – and that’s also the question your entire ‘landing-page + ethical bribe + follow-up-funnel’ have to answer is this:

is it (likely to be) worth my while? (aka: is it a good investment of my time & privacy)

in other words: if you want to get people’s permission to send them good stuff, they need to be as close to 100% as possible sure that this is NOT going to be a colossal (actually: even a tiny) waste of time, and that you’re not going to do anything untoward with their email address.

Taking just one of the items on the “but I don’t know…“-list above, the “but I don’t know what to bribe them with“, the answer is now simpler:

it’s whatever gives them the most confidence that you’re NOT wasting their time.

In other words: the type of content that gives them an opportunity to convince themselves that they are likely to get quality answers to their questions from you.

(I’m obviously assuming that you’re after quality optins here … if you just want as many signups as possible, free beer tends to do well)

The great news is:

that type of content has to be to the point … and is hence much easier to create than e.g. an all-encompassing 100-page ebook that showcases YOUR incredible expertise.

Sure, at some point, YOU will have to demonstrate that …

… but the first contact is all about THEM.

THEY ask:

is this (bribe) (and hence whatever is behind the bribe) going to help me solve MY problem?

And the best way of achieving that is by letting them see for themselves (without having to invest a ton of time & effort to ‘make it happen’)

Obviously, there’s more to that, and as they progress further down the ‘funnel’, those questions change, but if people don’t ever sign up to your list because you’re not ‘building’ a list, it doesn’t really matter what cool stuff you put in the follow-up funnel.

So, make sure that about 1/4 of your daily effort is focused on finding new ways of giving your prospective clients an opportunity to see for themselves that it’s worth giving YOU their permission to talk some more

Cheers

Veit

PS: in case you’re wondering why you should even ‘build a list’ – the answer is ‘leverage’.

With modern technology, there’s no real difference whether you’re communicating with one, 10, 100, 1000 or 10k prospective clients.

Same effort going in … massive difference in what you get out.

 

4 ‘business-hyper-growth’ activities you should focus on (if you want to grow your business faster than ever before)

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Most small business owners wish there were more hours in the day, so they could get more done (so they can generate the revenue they’re aiming for)

Turns out,  the ‘not getting enough stuff done’ is NOT the real reason why so many businesses struggle (whereas, at least initially, the ‘not enough revenue’ is often real;-)

So, if I could travel back in time (say the 10 years since leaving the corporate world;-), I’d tell myself to do a few things VERY differently!

Specifically, I’d have a list with precisely 4 things to do every day, and then spend my day on exactly those 4 things (using one very specific way of doing them)

​​Probably no more than 45mins on each one, but that time 100% fully focused.

Add a couple of breaks in between, and you’re looking at a 3h45min workday … and I can guarantee you’d get more stuff done in those few short hours than most people in a week.

(and even if you halve this, and only do a little under 2h/day  – you’ll still beat 99% of the rest of the population when it comes to ‘being productive’:

So, today, business-hyper-growth activity #1:

Focus on actually generating leads.


Before you throw up your hands in the air and exclaim: “but I don’t like talking to people and being all salesy…“

… STOP:

what I mean by ‘generating leads’ is:

finding places where your ideal clients hang out, and then make it known to those ideal clients that you have something that might be of interest to them.

This could any one of FB ads, ‘doing’ social media, networking, newspaper ads, phoning up people, asking for referrals, doing Adwords, JVs, solo-ads … whatever.

But, don’t do what this guy did:



a few years ago I gave a sales-seminar​​​​​​ in a city called Monchengladbach in Germany.

In the evenings, I went to check out the various restaurants in town.

So, one day I just wandered into one I hadn’t been to (it’s the place marked with red arrows in the image above;-), and, as usual, started talking to the manager (in this case also owner) about their marketing.

Turns out, they’re doing ‘flyers’ – beautifully designed, very enticing, even with a coupon for first-time visitors.

Clearly they know what they’re doing.

Or so I thought!

So​​​​​​​​​​, I ask him:

“where do people find these beautiful flyers?“

His response:

“right here, on the counter at the bar“.


I still think I would’ve done him a service by slapping him:

“FFS, if people don’t know about your​​​ restaurant, how the beep are they going to come here and find your beautiful flyers on the bar?“​​​​

Your job is to give your prospects an opportunity to learn about whatever wonderful thing you have.

Especially in today’s “short-attention-span” world, people just aren’t to go out of their way to search for you … either they can easily find you, or they’ll go with whomever is willing to show them that they have got what they WANT.

Now, when you starting looking at this ‘generating leads’ business, one key distinction to keep in mind:

If you’re into ‘mass-marketing’ …

focus on testing lots of different angles.

You big opportunity and leverage-point here is the fact that you tend to have lots of traffic.

And that means lots of split-testing opportunities.

In other words: let the market tell you what they WANT (instead of you guessing)

If you’re into ‘high-end’ marketing focused on a smaller target audience …

focus more on inbound marketing based on personal outreach.

The reason is that you have less opportunity for split-testing lots of angles (because the traffic is limited).

The knowledge.ly team e.g. have built all their businesses based on ‘cold emails’ to the right recipients.

(hypercharge that by combining it with the principles of Chet Holmes’ “Dream 100”-approach)

And once you’ve got just a handful ‘in your world’ … then engage them in a meaningful dialogue to figure out what they really WANT.

 

The key here is that you’re actively going out (I call it “respectfully interrupting” your prospective clients, and then pulling in the ones that are a great fit), instead of hoping that they’ll somehow, magically stumble upon your site and instantly recognize how great your offer is.

 

So, Lesson #1: Please, (PLEASE) don’t be that owner-manager who does all kinds of beautiful marketing … but never actually shows it to potential clients.

Instead: Invest just 45mins of your time daily on this one activity, and do it consistently, and you’ll get massive results faster than a typical Monchengladbach restaurant goes out of business (which sadly is so quick that every time we ran workshops up there, there’d be new restaurants on that square)

comments, questions, concerns?

let me know below

Veit