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The Dirtiest 4-Letter Words in Internet Marketing?
1) WORK
2) WHEN
3) RISK
4) TIME
Listen, this is NOT the first loaf of bread I’ve baked! I’ve been around the internet marketing game almost as long as anyone else. I’ve seen more pitches and appeals than you could possibly imagine. And given I’ve chosen to teach marketing, I’ve also spent many long, hard nights laying awake thinking about why so few people genuinely succeed.
It pains me, it really does. But most people in this game are so terrified of the truth, they stop reading when anyone starts to disclose it. You’ve got to be a little bit of a masochist to step out and say what I’m about to say if you still expect to be able to sell your materials.
On the other hand, anything of significant I’ve ever accomplished in my life came from facing reality square in the face, and then driving forward with intellect and fortitude until it yielded. Everything. So before we get to WHY “work, when, risk, and hire” are the four dirtiest four-letter words in internet marketing, let’s start with a challenge question…
I CHALLENGE YOU TO ANSWER THIS: Is there ANYTHING of significance in your own life which came to you without hard work, risk, deadline-focused commitment, and persistence over time? Anything?
When I ask people this question, perhaps 5% quote some lucky break. But upon further reflection and prompting they inevitably conclude “luck favors the prepared.” People who seem lucky from afar have usually worked VERY hard to put themselves in a position to take full advantage of the situation which seemed to “fall in their lap.”
Success requires we deal with four letter words! It takes the ability to put in the work, the willingness to commit to deadlines (“when”) , the cajones to take risk, and the ability to play the long game (“time.”)
Perhaps the toughest part is this: As an entrepreneur you don’t get the kind of linear, step by step feedback we were all trained to love in school. You don’t really know if you’ve “passed the first grade” or not because money doesn’t come out the end of the pipeline if there’s even one leak along the way…
So we all suffer with constantly agonizing decisions on how to balance these four letter monsters. Being an entrepreneur inevitably means having way more projects and opportunities than you can possibly handle, and having to take more risks with your resources than any of us ever really grow comfortable with… no matter how big we get.
The good news is, there are tools and systems for making these decisions much easier.
One of my favorites is a simple little spreadsheet technique for calculating weighted averages. I just list out my projects or choices one per row, and evaluate them against all the factors which I consider important to the decision in the columns. Finally, I assign a relative importance level to each of the factors, and the simple spreadsheet calculates a “batting average” (overall score) for each project.
Have a look at the video to see what I mean, and feel free to download this example here
NOTE: be sure to download the spreadsheet here to follow along.
(My apologies for the visual quality of this particular video… please don’t
tell my Mom, OK?)
Hope it helps,
The Very Good Dr. G 🙂