From Scratch (ep. 6)
Sometimes we have to sit back and appreciate the little things.
I woke up this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see a pretty major MMA event that’s live. This means I can knock out some work, iced coffee in hand, while watching fights.
Can’t ask for anything more when there’s a mountain of “boring” work that needs to get done.
And yes, I’m not of the belief that all business work is fun. For those of you who have tricked your mind into believing so, hit me up. I want to learn your secrets.
Anyway, I want to illustrate a situation I witnessed during a kickboxing match during this MMA event.
During this particular fight, it was pretty lopsided. It’s pretty clear who was winning this fight.
So during the 30 second break in-between rounds, the camera panned toward the losing fighter’s corner. The fighter clearly has the body language of someone who knows he’s losing.
And his coach didn’t try to convince him otherwise. Which I really respect.
The coach made it clear the fighter was losing. He needed to pull out a miracle in this last round if he wanted to win.
Next came a couple slaps to head and repeated words of, “fight for your family”. The coach tried to light a fire inside his defeated fighter.
So the fighter rose up from his stool for the last round and came out swinging.
And if you’re looking for some kind of fairy tale happy ending…
Sorry.
The fighter wasn’t able to do enough and ended up losing. But there’s an important lesson to be learned about offers here from the fired up coach.
What that coach was trying to do was instill a sense of certainty into his fighter. He wanted the fighter to believe that even though he was losing, he could still win.
And when I create offers for my businesses or for my clients, this is the same perspective I like to adopt as well.
Offers are not about the product or deliverables. It’s about the transference of certainty to your prospect.
There’s an obvious juxtaposition I see with a lot of businesses.
Founders build their business for the purpose of serving a specific prospect. But when it comes to building their offers, it’s like they’re building it for themselves.
They include features they think their customers want…
They speak about their offer from the perspective of how great the offer is…
…instead of how the great the offer is for the prospect.
OR if they do speak about how great the offer is for the prospect…
They emphasize a smorgasbord of things like 10 hour trainings, 20 checklists, 50 templates, software, etc.
Instead of making the prospect confident in achieving their desired goal, this drives the goal further and further away from the prospect. Like watching a city skyline slowly disappear in the horizon.
So when we craft or present offers, we need to create an environment where your prospect:
Clearly sees your plan to help them reach their goals.
Builds confidence in your plan and is achievable in their mind.
Sees your solution as safe for his/her reputation, current identity, and situation.
Again, I want to preface this by saying we’re not trying to trick our prospect in thinking there’s no work involved. We only want to create that feeling.
They’re two completely different things
It’s the difference between doing 3 things consistently for 30 days to lose X pounds versus taking a magic pill.
Some sales trainers I know say that sales is the transference of energy.
So if sales is the transference of energy, your offer is the transference of certainty.
I’m not going to dig into any how-to’s in this week’s issue. I want you to understand this from a principle perspective first.
Because I believe those who think from strategy and tactics first… they’re always going to be searching for next new thing like a drug addict with high tolerance.
Chronic shiny object syndrome.
But when we understand things from principles, we can then create our own strategy and tactics.
Okay, so onto updates for P4P.
No meetings booked the past week, but I’ve shifted my focus in the last week to build up my Twitter.
At the end of the day, you have to go where your audience is. And my audience is most active on Twitter.
So I made sure my Twitter looked nice and spiffy. As an experiment, I started to DM potential clients via Twitter.
I wasn’t really expecting much. But surprisingly, a couple conversations came about.
And as I alluded to before on a previous issue of Inside My Mind, I’m retooling my cold outreach strategy.
So with my new approach, things are looking surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because you can sit and ponder about how these strategies should and could work…
But the real test is seeing it in action.
And look, I come up with stupid ideas all the time. So it still surprises me when I see one work.
I showed my private clients what I was doing and I’m having them involuntarily be my guinea pigs too (don’t worry they’re happy to do it).
And once the approach has been refined… maybe I’ll exclusively release it here in Inside My Mind for you.
Anyway, learning a new platform has been interesting. There are still times when I question my approach, but I know where those thoughts are stemming from.
My mind wants the result now without the pain.
So when I start to feel overwhelmed and discouraged, I always ask myself this question…
“What’s the best way to climb a mountain?”
One step at a time.
I recently finished a book by Jocko Willink called Discipline Equals Freedom. When I was up to my eyeballs in work, passages from this book became mind medicine to me.
One of the concepts Jocko talks about is shutting your mind down.
So when you have a stack of tasks in front of you that you know you should do… but you keep finding every little excuse to procrastinate…
Shut your mind down and do what you need to do.
There were times last week where I had to drive myself into that state. And I wish I could tell you that I felt proud of myself and fulfilled after accomplishing those tasks…
But I didn’t. I just did what I know I needed to do.
Putting too much thought into it would probably just raise the cortisol levels again.
But there’s good that will come out of this.
Every time I overcome one of these situations, I feel like I’m extending my limits and adding more stamina to my willpower.
At least, I like to believe I am.
Anyways, one step at a time. We’re moving and grooving even though I’d like things to progress faster.
We’re in this for the long game.
Trust the process, love the process.
Kevin