Tag: small business marketing strategy

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Business Ideas

Are You Playing to Win or Playing Not to Lose?

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You may have heard the phrase “playing to win or playing not to lose.” And while it sounds good to say “you’re playing to win” in your business, what exactly does that really mean?

Okay, well first off, let’s define these phrases. To me, playing to win means playing all out. Going for broke. Leaving nothing on the table. You’re putting everything out there to win and holding nothing back.

Playing not to lose means holding something back. Being conservative. Taking some of your chips off the table. Making sure if you don’t win, you minimize your losses.

Now is there a time for each of these? Of course. Playing not to lose makes a lot of sense in certain situations. Vegas for instance. Betting your retirement on a spin of the roulette wheel isn’t real bright. (Even if by some miraculous chance it works, it’s still not too bright.)
And if that’s the way you want to approach your business and your life (playing not to lose) then there’s nothing wrong with it. You can still be successful playing not to lose.

But typically, if that’s your approach, you’re not going to play as big as you could be. And you’re probably not going to make the kind of money you’re capable of.

So how do you know if you’re playing to win or playing not to lose? Well, here are a few signs.

Playing to win in your business:

  • You take risks (and a lot of those risks other people just don’t “get”). Maybe you invest in a high end coaching program or mentorship. Maybe you decide to launch a product that looks on the outside to be a bad idea. Maybe you decide to expand and hire a team even though you really can’t afford it right now.
  • You take advantage of opportunities even if they don’t appear to be a good idea on the surface.
  • You turn down opportunities even if on the surface they look perfect. (Ah, didn’t think I’d say that, did you?)
  • You make decisions from the place you want to be, not necessarily the place you’re at now. (Even if that’s a really scary place to be.)

Playing not to lose in your business:

  • You make decisions based on what you can afford rather than what you need. Okay, a caveat here. I’m NOT saying you should spend your life savings or go into massive debt with no way of paying it off. What I AM saying is sometimes you have to take a risk. For instance, hiring team members. What happens a lot of time is you need the help desperately but you don’t quite have the cash flow. If you never take that first step and hire someone, even on a small basis, you’ll never free yourself up to start making more money.
  • You’re ultra careful about the risks you take (or you don’t take risks at all)
  • You probably aren’t marketing as much as you should be because deep down inside, you don’t want your business to grow very big (after all, you’d start to lose control of it if it did grow to big). Or you aren’t marketing as much because what if it doesn’t work? What if you make this big public splash with your marketing and it fails? It’s bad enough it doesn’t work but now everyone will know it.
  • You don’t try a lot of new things — speaking, marketing, etc.

Now, I want to be clear. There’s nothing wrong with playing not to lose, but chances are you WILL be playing small. You’re going to miss opportunities to get your message and vision out in a big way. You’re not going to take chances where you might fall on your face (especially if you fall on your face in a public way).

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Entrepreneurs

What Ohio State Football Can Teach You About Your Business

If you follow college football, you’ve probably run across Ohio State a time or two. Their football program is very old and very prestigious.

But I’m still cringing at the thought of watching them get beaten by Oregon at the Rose Bowl. (Yes I’m fairly certain they’ll lose although I do hope I’m wrong.) As a Big Ten fan, I’m really tired of watching Ohio State get hammered in these big, national games.
(Of course, if MY team, the Wisconsin Badgers, would ever actually beat them in conference, maybe all of this would be different but I digress.)

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Why did Ohio State win so darn many games only to consistently embarrass the BigTen in big out-of-conference games? Jim Tressel is an excellent coach. Isn’t he?

Well, this year I finally got my answer. Yes Jim Tressel is an excellent coach. But he plays not to lose. He doesn’t play to win.

And that, my friends, is why he loses the big games. Because those teams come to win. And Tressel is coming not to lose. (And that’s why he’s probably gong to lose to Oregon at the Rose Bowl because Oregon has been playing to win all season.)

So what exactly does it mean to play not to lose? Well it means playing very conservatively. You punt the ball rather than going for it on 4th and short. You go for the field goal rather than the touchdown. You build very strong defenses. You commit very few penalties. You have a very well coached team.

It also means you don’t take chances. You don’t have quarterbacks that heave the ball down the field in broken plays that can result in an interception or an 80-yard touchdown. You also don’t win a lot of shootouts. And if your game plan isn’t working, you don’t have a lot of options because winging it isn’t something you do.

And you’re also pretty uninteresting to watch. (Sorry Buckeye fans but it’s true.)

Now, can you win games playing not to lose? Absolutely. Tressel has a very respectable record. (Much better than my Badgers.) He’s won the Big Ten Title nearly every year.

The problem happens when he gets to the big games. Now I’m not a coach nor did I ever play football but I do watch a lot of it and here’s what I think happens. If you’re not able to prevent Ohio from executing their game plan, you’re toast. If Ohio can execute their game plan, they’re going to do it very well and probably beat you.

But, if you throw a wrench in that game plan, if you throw them off, well then Ohio has a problem. They’re not good at improvising nor do they take chances. And if you don’t take a chance, especially when the chips are down, you’re probably not going to win those games.

So what about you? Are you playing not to lose or are you playing to win? Sure you can do well playing not to lose, but you’re never going to play as big of a game as you could be. Play to win, sure you might fall on your face from time to time but you’ll probably end up playing bigger than you ever thought possible.

So what does it mean to play to win or play not to lose? I’ll talk about that more in next week’s article.

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People & Relationships

When Bad Things Happen to Good Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

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It’s an unfortunate fact of life (and business). Out of the blue you get a nasty email from someone. Sometimes it’s about an article you’ve written. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a refund request. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it’s tied to anything at all.

Or maybe you discover someone writing malicious things about you on a blog or a forum. Or maybe some other negative things suddenly start getting tweeted or posted to Facebook about you, your products or your business.

Stuff happens. As a business owner and entrepreneur, the more successful you become, the more you open yourself up to criticism, negative feedback or just plain being attacked.

As someone who is both a writer AND a business owner, I know all about what happens when you’re dealing with unwelcome criticism. (I write fiction so yes, I’ve dealt with my share of negative feedback.) But if this is something new for you, or even if it’s not new but you’re feeling like you’ve just been sucker-punched by something out of the blue, I thought I’d share a few insights to help you get through it.

1. Know you’re not alone.
We’ve ALL been there. And I mean exactly that. It doesn’t matter how small or big your business is, stuff like this is going to happen. So know that no matter what just happened to you, there are a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners out there who will both sympathize and emphasize.

2. See it for what it is.
All criticism is not created equally. Sometimes what someone is saying has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with their own issues. Sometimes they have a legitimate complaint but the person is so unhappy with their own life they blow it completely out of portion because they just want to strike out at someone and you’re the one they picked.

And sometimes they have a legitimate beef AND they handled it fine, but you just didn’t want to hear it. An example of this is some of the criticism I’ve gotten from some of my stories. The people were thoughtful and absolutely right. And I hated them. (Until I got over myself and slunk back to the keyboard to make the edits.)

Now the third option doesn’t happen too often (unless you’re a fiction writer) but the first two do. You just have to see it for what it is. If there’s something buried in the anger and name-calling you can use to improve your products, services or business, by all means use it. But know the rest of it has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
(And you’ll know when the criticism is right. Trust me. Your gut will tell you.)

3. Be kind to yourself.
When these things happen, it can hurt. And that’s okay. Call a friend. Or better yet, your mother (if you can). Write about it in your journal. Take a walk. Don’t bury your feelings, let yourself feel bad and then let it go. Don’t tell yourself it doesn’t matter and let it fester inside you, deal with it. Get it out of you. And then let it go.

4. Let someone else deal with these things.
Whenever possible, have someone else in your business be a filter for stuff like this. Let other people take care of refund requests or just read the nasty emails and they can decide if there’s a legitimate complaint buried in there or not. Protect yourself, there’s no need for you to see everything or deal with everything. Yes you’ll have to step in if something big happens, but let other people take care of the small stuff. The small stuff is what wears you down anyway. Save yourself for the big things and don’t worry about the rest.

Categories
Business Ideas

Is Your Timing Keeping You From Being Successful In Your Business? Part 3

Last couple of issues I talked about how either moving too fast or too slow can sabotage your success. (You can read part 1 and 2 here: http://www.michelepw.com/blog ) Today I’m going to talk about a place where entrepreneurs typically move too fast — launching their product.

I know. You just finished your product or program and you can’t wait to start selling it. In fact, if you could, you’d start selling it yesterday!

And it’s agonizing waiting to launch your product. You want to be making money NOW, not waiting for weeks or months before you actually see any income. Plus you want to get it into the hands of your ideal clients, they NEED what you’re selling. So who has time to sit around waiting to promote? Just get a sales letter up and start selling it, right?

Okay here’s the thing. There’s a reason why product launches work and there’s a reason why you reach more people (and make more money) if you control yourself and do it right.

What’s that reason? Urgency.

You see, probably the biggest reason why your ideal clients decide not to buy is lack of urgency. They may like the product, they may know they need it, they may like YOU. And I bet they even INTEND to buy — just not right now. Right now they have a million other things going on and a bunch of other things they’re spending money on but in a few months or a year they will have the time or money to “finally” invest.

Well, we all know how that works out.

The more time and energy you spend building up buzz for your product, the more you’ll start creating that urgency. And the more you’ve built that urgency into your ideal clients’ minds, the more likely they’ll buy (and USE) your product, thus getting the results they want.

So it’s a win-win. You win because you get your product into the world while being paid handsomely for it, and your ideal clients win because they get the help they need to solve their problem.

So how much time should you allow for a product launch? Well it depends on the launch. There are a variety of launch systems out there, and depending on what you want to accomplish (and who your ideal clients are) dictates your launch. But here are some guidelines to get you started:

If you’re doing a straight teleclass launch (i.e. a preview call that sells the product or program) I would allow a minimum of a 2 weeks before the preview call. (Note, if you want to get affiliates involved you’ll need to allow a lot more time to plan. The more time you give your affiliates to put in their promotional calendars, the more likely you’ll get them to actually promote.)

If you’re doing more of a “release a special report and/or video” which teases the product by providing information, then you’ll need 4-6 weeks. Those take a little longer to get the viral aspect going. Because a preview call has a “date” when the call is, there’s built-in urgency, but a special report or video doesn’t necessarily have that.

If you want to use surveys or a contest, you might be able to do it in a couple of weeks but it would help if you had a little longer (2 weeks to do the survey then 2 weeks to do something with the results of the survey).

Remember these are minimum times AND these are how much time to actually PROMOTE. No, you don’t have 2 weeks to write a squeeze page, once the squeeze page if up, you need at least 2 weeks to promote. If you wanted to add a couple of weeks to do some other promotions, that’s never a bad idea. (Remember, the more you promote the more urgency you build and the more your ideal clients will want to buy.)

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Is Your Timing Keeping You From Being Successful In Your Business? Part 2

Last week I talked about how either moving too fast or too slow can sabotage your success. (You can read part 1 by visiting my blog… my website address is listed below.) Today I’m going to talk about a place where entrepreneurs typically move too slow — creating products or programs.

Does this sound familiar? You’ve been working on your book or your program or product for several months or maybe even years. You’re close to finishing — you just have one or two more things to do. Of course, every time you finish those one or two things, one or two more things crop up. It’s never ending.

If this does sound familiar, you’re not alone. I know many, many entrepreneurs (including myself) who have taken longer than necessary to complete their products. The reasons vary but many fall into the “perfectionist” camp. You take pride in your work. You want your product to be perfect. You want your customers to love your product and get a lot out of it. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, there is when it prevents you from actually bringing your product to market. Think about it — if the conclusion isn’t quite right or there are a few missed typos, is that going to REALLY take away from the experience of your product? Or the results your customers will get?

Of course not. But we’re so fixated on it being perfect we can’t get past that.

Now the advice many successful business owners share when you’re in this situation is something along the lines of “good enough is good enough” (meaning your product doesn’t have to be perfect, just get it to a good product and then get it to market) or “taking imperfect action” (which also basically means get the darn thing out the door even if it is imperfect). I agree with both of these statements, but the problem is what happens when you know this and you STILL need to get that “one more thing done?”

I think there are a couple of deeper issues around perfectionism. (And depending on how deep the issues are depends on how quickly you can push through them.) Let me explain.

When we create a product it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the product is an extension of ourselves. So any flaws or mistakes or criticism of the product suddenly takes on way more importance than it ought to be. Because any problems with the product, anything that is lacking in the product, is actually a problem or a lack with us personally.

In addition to that (if that wasn’t hard enough to get past) there’s also a little question of value. If you don’t value yourself, your gifts, your brilliance, what you bring to the world, then how are you going to value a product you created? And if you don’t value your product, when will it ever be “good enough” to sell?

So what happens if you find yourself relating to one or both of these issues? Well, you need to take a step back and do some deeper work on yourself. Hiring a coach or taking a program that gets at the core of what you’re struggling with– whether it’s valuing yourself, valuing your brilliance or accepting yourself (warts and all) is crucial to helping you push through your blocks and getting your products finished and selling.

If you want to do something right now, try journaling about it. See what comes up for you and what your next steps should be.

Next week we’re going to look at the next step – racing through your product launch now that you’ve finally gotten your product done.