I had a client ask about giving up recently.
- She had tried so many things.
- She had spent so much money (I’m talking over $50,000)
- She had wasted so much time. (Years)
“Charlie, I think maybe this online business is not for me”.
She was clearly hurting.
The ironic thing is that I could clearly see that she was perfectly suited to selling online.
She simply lacked a solid plan of action, focus, and someone to guide her to success.
So, I asked her my “big domino” question.
“If you could fix ONE thing, what would it be?”
Her answer, not surprisingly, was EVERYTHING!
You see, she had listened to the wrong voices. And those voices were all telling her different things.
“You need at least 10 websites to succeed online.”
She had over 50.
“Forget pay per click, the real money is on Facebook.”
She had spent thousands.
“Forget Facebook, the real buyers are on Instagram.”
She had grammed her fingers to the bone.
All of these conflicting voices had left her feeling like she needed everything.
According to her, she urgentlyneeded to …
- Drive more traffic.
- Write blog posts.
- Put up squeeze pages.
- Create lead magnets.
- Learn Facebook advertising.
- Do market research.
- Start podcasting.
- Do webinars.
I was exhausted listening to her give me the list! 🙂
Please understand, these are all fine things.
- But no one can do all of them at once.
- And no one can do all of them alone.
- And some of them need to be completely ignored!
How did we get her from “it’s time to quit trying” to launching her own product?
A little thing called FOCUS.
We focused on the ONE THING that would bring results to her life … not just what would keep her busy.
You see, there is a difference between focus and the APPEARANCE of focus.
- People who are super-busy but never get anything finished can appear to be focused.
- People who are focused on their Most Important Task often do not appear to be focused, even if they are.
That was the trap she was in. Busy all the time but never finishing a project.
So here is the big domino question …
What is the ONE THING you want to fix?
Please understand this, if you are not succeeding online yet finding the one thing that needs to be corrected IS your only goal.
It really is that simple.
- You find it.
- You fix it.
- You move on to the next roadblock until you succeed.
Let me share a few examples of how I advise clients when they are stuck.
- People who do not have a plan of action they trust need to focus on one thing … developing a plan of action that will move them from where they are now to where they want to be.
- People who have a landing page that is not converting well do NOT need more traffic. They need to focus on their landing page until it converts at an acceptable rate.
- People who have a product that is not selling do not need to recruit affiliates. They need to improve their offer until it becomes irresistible.
- People who do not know what to promote need to take the time to find something they can believe in and then commit to promoting it hard for 90 days.
- People with no money to spend do not need to take courses on paid traffic methods. They need to DO the things that work to get free traffic to their sites.
NOTE: It was almost 2 years after I bought the Directory of Ezines that I ran my first paid ad. For those 2 years I spent 100% of my time doing content marketing – sending articles to publishers so they would publish my article in their ezine.
Why don’t more people focus on what will really help them?
I’ve thought deeply about this and come to these conclusions.
- Information overload clouds our brains and makes deciding these things alone almost impossible. We just can’t see the forest for the trees.
- Our self-image can be damaged. So many people can see others succeeding but don’t really believe it can happen for them.
- Focus is not always fun. Bearing down on one thing until it is done can be hard and make you feel like you are neglecting other things.
- Distractions often mean we get interrupted just as we begin to make progress. How many times did you check your email today?
Last question …
How can I help you go from where you are to where you want to be?
The only way to know for sure is to have a conversation.
I invite you to begin that conversation now by visiting this site.
I hope you can find and destroy the roadblock that is holding you back. We all have them and finding them usually means getting some help.
But if you get that help, and if you find that roadblock and remove it, you will experience something amazing as your work becomes your joy and the money starts to flow.
And those are beautiful things indeed!
