A funny thing happens when I sit on a bus for an hour… my brain starts ticking over and smacks me around the head with insight, ideas or unpleasant truths. Today was the turn of honest truth. It was the unpleasant truth that I don’t really want to admit to, yet somehow I MUST.
For anyone serious about building a successful business (and I am) then the focus has been completely wrong… almost all the time has been spent on the technical stuff (which IS important) and neglecting the business and marketing side of things. It’s an easy trap to fall into (very VERY easy). It’s a trap that many sole traders and small business owners are caught by (so at least i’m in good company!)
The fact is it’s dead easy to allow all your effort, energy and attention to go on the stuff you’ve been doing for years and that you know really well… at the expense (and most likely to avoid) the stuff you’re not so comfortable or experienced with. For me it’s writing code, for you it may be writing your latest masterpiece, designing a new range of baby clothes, or refining, tweaking and adjusting your prices, timetables or computer database!
History is littered with “technically superior” products that lost the war and all too often the reason boils down to crappy or non-existent marketing. In other words, marketing like mine…
So how can this be turned around?
Well, first up, I’m not about to abandon all technical development to just do “sales”… That would simply take things to the other extreme – i.e. crappy or non-existent product or service! The trick is to find a balance, a compromise between technical development, business development and marketing. For one thing I’m going to start paying more attention to the info I get via Mal Emery’s CD of the month (if you like people who cut through the BS, check out Mal), and also make a real effort to start enjoying the marketing side of things (that’s a big ask, trust me!)
So, how does someone go about “enjoying marketing”? I believe there is only one correct answer to this and that is to tap into the genuine enthusiasm and belief I have for the value and benefit provided to the work-at-home community. Let’s face it, I put in many hours creating the product because of that belief… Now it’s time to use that to get the product out there!
Actually, I wonder how many people would recognise this trap? Quite a few I suspect…
Almost halfway through the “30 Day Challenge” of switching from night-owl to early-bird, and I have to say it’s not much fun. I do enjoy the early starts, and I am less tired overall, however it feels “wrong” when I switch off the computer at night. My productivity has suffered, I’ve got loads of tasks stacking up on my “to do” list, and it feels like I am missing out on 3 to 4 hours of usable time every night. This in turn is making me grumpy and frustrated.
It would be so easy to go back to the old ways, and reclaim those late night hours. Perhaps after the 30 days I will still feel that way, and will do so, however… for now I will persist and make further efforts to fit everything into the time available.
I was sat here thinking how my Sunday hasn’t panned out how I might have preferred. The plan was to catch up on a few web site things, tasks that need doing for clients, and planning out my work for tomorrow. What actually happened was an extended morning nap with my 22 month old son (on account of the late night watching United in the FA Cup), a cycle ride to a local cafe for lunch, and an invite to dinner at my brother-in-law’s place.
My initial reaction to all this was “oh poo” – I had deliberately concentrated on doing a couple of jobs in the garden yesterday, thinking I’d concentrate on the computer stuff today. As I think about this more however, I’ve accepted that today was a much-needed day of being “easy like Sunday morning”. I’ve relaxed, rested, had a great cycle ride and lunch with my wife and son, and am now looking forward to a great evening with a splash of beer, a drop of wine and some great sushi.
It’s quite interesting how a so-called secondary goal has become THE main focus, and that’s exactly what has happened with the efforts to switch from being a night-owl to an “early bird”. It is widely accepted that to evaluate and/or establish any new habit, a period of 30 days should be allowed, even so I can already see some significant changes including being able to attend an interesting “networking brekkie” that started at 7:15am, and typically waking between 5am and 6am without the use of an alarm clock. This in turn has translated to being more productive (in some ways), and generally the “feelgood factor” that comes with achieving something.
There have been negatives, and perhaps the biggest one is the jetlag-like feeling that seems to be permanently in the background, and also a sense of not really knowing what I am supposed to be doing at a particular time (especially at times when I would previously have still been in bed!) That’s probably where the real value lies in this change; I am forced to think about what I am going to do with my time, which ought to translate to a more well-defined and effective use of the time.
However, the first really big challenge occurs tonight. I’ve been up since 6 this morning, and really want to continue with the same pattern tomorrow. The fly in the ointment is the fact that it is FA Cup quarter finals weekend, Manchester United are playing Arsenal and it’s an evening kick-off (1:15am Perth time). So my strategy is to unwind/nap for the next few hours, watch the game and then hope that the habit has already established enough that I might stir between 6am and 7am. I think the body and mind can cope with a one-off variation to the new norm – we shall see.
If THIS goes well, then it will bode well for next Saturday when we hit Perth for a night of making merry in Northbridge…
I am often struck by the fact that I am the least business-y person I know, and yet somehow I persist with this idea of having my own business. You see, not only do I believe that it is possible to build a business on the notion of offering low-cost solutions to work-at-home parents, I am also “allergic” to marketing-speak, sales jargon, business analysis, planning, goal-setting and just about everything else you might conventionally associate with “success” or “business”.
I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the passion I have for what I do, the clarity of the vision that accompanies it, and the necessary technical knowledge to realise that vision are, pretty much, all that are required to make this thing fly. Some bright spark may come along one day and organise a “proper” business around the chaos I create, however I remain convinced that the usual “business BS” is not actually necessary – certainly not for someone building web-based services.
I’m sure there are many conventional thinkers who will shake their heads in disgust, each to their own
I recently attended a speed-networking event, which was a lot of fun, and also forced me to a) come up with a concise summary of what it is I do and b) get some practice in telling people what I do.
Those two things sound simple enough yet, somehow, it’s something that doesn’t necessarily come naturally. Anyway, following on from this event I received an invite to attend a “networking brekkie”, which I went to this morning.
I have to say, it was brilliant. Once more I was pushed out of my comfort zone, and had to speak publicly to a group of about a dozen or so people about what I do. I didn’t know what to expect to be honest, and I am happy to report that the “audience” was a very supportive group who even laughed at my jokes. The post-meeting mingling was very positive as well – people actually made the effort to introduce themselves, which doesn’t always happen at these things, it has to be said!
Overall it was very enjoyable spending time with some proper business people, and educational too!
It struck me today that this is what faith is. Faith in yourself, your own abilities and your own ideas. When you hit a slump, hit a wall, get writer’s block, lose your mojo or go walkabout temporarily it is the degree of faith you have in yourself that will determine how soon you can get back on track, if at all.
In the words of 80s pop icon, George Michael, you’ve got to have faith. Let’s face it, if you don’t then no-one else will!
It’s been a weird few days, and I still have a stack of things on my hypothetical “todo list” that should have been cleared, or at least started, in the past few days. At one stage I was worried it was a side-effect of my efforts to change sleeping patterns; the reality, I think, is that I simply needed the break and the long weekend was an ideal opportunity to take one!
It’s not like I’ve sat around doing nothing – we’ve been to a couple of kids’ birthday parties, I’ve fixed up some fencing in the back yard, and I’ve also got to grips with some Facebook integration in ExpressWAHPz (giving subscribers an easy way to publish content on their business pages, now that Static FBML is being phased out). I also had a super-fantastic phone conversation with a lady in Sydney to chat about mutually beneficial business opportunities.
Essentially, the past few days have been filled with a bit of R&R, and what can best be described as pottering about and tinkering with interesting bits and pieces here and there!
Back to the day job tomorrow, and hopefully the motiviation mojo will make a welcome return!
The sleep pattern changes have gone on for almost a week now, and writing this will be the last thing I do before heading to bed (it’s currently 10:40pm).
I remain convinced that the habit of being a night-owl can be changed, and I’ve been really pleased with the results so far. There is a feeling of being jet-lagged to some degree, and that’s probably not helping me to get on with some of the work that I need to do rather than want to do.
I AM waking up about 2am, though it seems to be relatively easy to get back to sleep (fortunately) using meditation-style breathing techniques. Even over the weekend I have been awake before 7am, and I have definitely benefited from that in some ways. The jet-lag type stuff has probably made me less productive in other ways – my hope is that this is a short-term thing, and things will click into place after a couple of weeks of the new regime.
Looking forward to the day when getting up as soon as I wake is an automatic response – and for the early part of the day to become a far more productive one!
