A journey from Internet marketing stasis to business mastery and financial freedom (I hope)

I have to admit that I found Module 2 quite tough. I’m starting to get my head around being a “Mediator” and what that means for my business but it’s still all a bit wooly.

Yesterday, I managed to stay very focussed on my business and got a lot done in double-quick time. As a reward to myself, I listened to the Module 3 call. It may not sound like much of a reward, working through nearly 2 hours of audio and 150 presentation slides, but I was really looking forward to it and this gave me some much needed motivation to get my other tasks for the day done and out of the way.

This module was much more to my liking. Much more concrete. I could see exactly where it fitted in and how it would impact my business. I got very inspired and fired up to think about my niche area, my vision, mission, values and beliefs. I got started on it late last night and made further headway this morning.

It was about then that I had a bit of a relapse…

Maybe it’s something I had at the weekend (I have a nasty food intolerance that can knock me right out of whack if I’m not careful) but I’ve been feeling very run down ever since. I took my eye off the ball this morning and suffered the consequences.

So what happened?

A new ‘business opportunity’ arrived in the post from our good friends Andrew Reynolds and Tim Lowe and I basically spent (wasted?) most of the morning looking at it and getting myself into a flap about what to do.

I’ve been following Mr. Reynolds for many years and can see that it could be a good opportunity for the right person. It’s essentially a training day on how to take $135,000 worth of new info products and sell them with ongoing mentoring to help follow it through. Such a brief summary doesn’t do it justice but I don’t want to give any more details here. That’s not really the point of this.

The real point is the problem it presented. And the problem was this: I was very tempted to take the offer.

Now one of the things about being on Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System is that he tries to get you to focus on just one business or project at a time. When you do that, your one focus becomes all that matters and you become immune to the multitude of ‘opportunities’ that come knocking. You might miss something good but that’s a million times better than trying to do two things or, worse, trying to grab every opportunity that comes along. That only leads to doom and failure. I should know.

Of course I could take on this new business and do quite well from it. After all, I’ve been studying it for the last 2 years or so and I know exactly what needs to be done.

But if I did, I would end up losing focus on my existing business or perhaps even abandoning it altogether. This is the business I’ve spent the last 3 years building up. The business I’m only just scratching the surface of its full potential. The business I was so fired up about first thing this morning.

What was I thinking?

Well, the offer is now in its rightful place in the bin (that’s ‘trash’ for all you States-siders). And I’m happy about that. Focus has been restored. I can breathe deeply and relax again.

But not too much, there’s work to be done…

(Go on, leave a comment, you know you want to!)

So it’s been over a month since I last posted. There’s so much I’ve wanted to write about but I’ve been kinda busy.

The good news is that since I started the Business Growth System with Rich Schefren, I’ve been able to focus on my business a lot better.

I’ve hardly even looked at any opportunistic offerings appearing in my Inbox. Hardly any… except for that course I had to buy (that I don’t want to mention right now)… and that other matter, but don’t get me started on that one…

I was doing so well with the focus and was all set to write about it but old habits are hard to break.

So what about the BGS programme then?

Well, first off, I’m soooo glad I signed up for the 12-month version and not the intensive 11-week thing. It’s been hard to keep up and we’ve only just reached module 2!

Module 1 was all about the phases of business growth and our own understanding of what it means to be in business and what we want from it. I had a lot to think about here and I’ve come to realise many things about why I’m struggling to cope with my business, where I want it to go and how I’m going to go about getting there.

I’ve even started planning an exit strategy which is something I hadn’t even considered in the past. I thought the business was just going to carry on forever on its own while I nip off and do other things. How did I figure that was going to happen? I guess I didn’t really figure it much at all.

But now my whole attitude to the business is changing and a plan is forming.

With the 2-hour call, the workbook, the forum, the 8 hours of Q&A calls and the follow up work that needs to be done, I’m really still working through module 1. It’s amazing stuff.

But I was pretty keen to move on to module 2. It’s about identifying strengths and building a business around core competencies so I managed to squeeze that in earlier today. Just like module 1, it’s no good just listening to the call and reading the slides. I’ve got to follow it through and do the work.

This is quite a scary one. What if I find that I don’t have any strengths? What if I can’t identify any key differentiators in my business or create a competitive advantage?

Of course that’s just fear and nonsense getting the better of me. My strengths are there waiting to be discovered and if I follow the programme, I’ll be sure to use them to create my competitive advantage.

The Kolbe test was interesting. This is a test that aims to uncover your Modus Operandi (MO) which is your personal, ideal way of dealing with things. I guess everyone on the course is somewhat hoping they’ll come out of it labelled as an “Entrepreneur” to validate themselves as being suitable for running a business. There’s already been much discussion on the forum about results with some people dissapointed at being labelled a “Manager”.

So how did I score? 6 4 5 6!

That labels me as a “Mediator”. It seems to indicate that I deal with most things in a middle-of-the-road kind of way. I don’t have any particular bias or strength in any of the 4 modes.

There’s go right, wrong, good or bad result with this test. It just tells you the way you are. I’m still trying to figure out what my result means to me… The graphs are very pretty though!

Until next time…