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

You absolutely must play to your strengths if you have any chance of success. This is the message from Rich Schefren in his Business Growth System course.

In his book “Good To Great“, Jim Collins says pretty much the same thing. If you don’t play to your strengths, you can build a good company but not a great one.

It’s a scary thought. What if I’m not playing to my strengths – am I going to fail? And how do I even know what my strengths are?

So one of the first tasks that Rich sets in the course is to identify your own particular strengths using various methods. As a Brit, trained in the art of modesty all my life, I’m not used to thinking about what it is I’m actually good at. I felt a little uncomfortable doing this initially but in the end I found it very enlightening.

One approach is to ask friends and family what they think since an outsider’s perspective can offer unexpected insights. I actually failed to set this one up at the time but I may still do this.

Another, more introspective approach is to recall achievements you’ve made throughout your life and then try to identify what skills were required for each one. You can then look for patterns. The actual achievement doesn’t have to have any relevance to business, it’s more about personal traits and characteristics.

To give you a personal example, as a child I was a good chess player and also good at sporting activities (running, throwing, batting, PE, rope climbing, etc.). Later on, in my teens, I represented my school in athletics and completed a half-marathon. And one of my most enduring memories from the age of about 15 is getting up at about 6 am, 7 days a week to deliver local newspapers in all weathers for very little pay just so that I could save up to buy something I particularly wanted.

Now you might be thinking that my strength here is something to do with sport or fitness. Well, fitness certainly does play a part but the key traits that link all of these acheivements together are actually “determination” and “persistence”. Determination to be the best, to win or to reach the target. Persistence to keep going until I finished or got what I wanted.

And as I look back over my whole life, I see those same traits popping up everywhere. Now I know that I can call upon these strengths whenever I need to because they’re a part of who I am.

One of my favourite exercises for identifying strengths was actually mentioned in Rich Scheferen’s “Manifesto” and, surprisingly, wasn’t part of the Business Growth System course materials at all. At the top of a blank piece of paper, write the words “One of my strengths is” then underneath list 20 good qualities you have or things that you think you’re good at.

And don’t be modest. Try to reach beyond any self-limiting beliefs you might have. This is not something you’re going to show to someone else and say “look at me, aren’t I great, I’m so good at all these things”. No, it’s a personal and private list to give you a better understanding of yourself and boost your self-confidence.

Having created your list, don’t ponder it, just put it somewhere safe and get on with whatever else you need to do. Then repeat the same exercise every day for about a week. The key here is to start with a blank piece of paper each time and not refer to any previous lists you’ve made.

Although a 5 or 10-minute time limit is a good idea, I personally felt that it was more important to have the discipline to keep going until all 20 slots were filled. What you will probably find is that the first 10 are relatively easy but then it becomes harder to think of things as you reach the bottom, even though you know you found 20 the day before.

The real fun starts at the end of the week when you can pull out all of your lists and examine them. What you’ll find is that your most dominant strengths will appear on every list, usually near the top, but when you put them all together you will probably find at least 30 strengths that you have. These are the things that make you tick. Some of them you’ll think of as plainly obvious but others (often near the bottom of the lists) will amaze you as things you hadn’t really considered before.

However you identify them, these are your strengths. The particular combination is unique to you. It’s what makes you special.

Since this is a blog about me, I was going to list some of my strengths that I’ve identified but thinking about what I’ve just written, I realise that might be inappropriate at this point. Aside from the personal and private nature of my list, I think there’s a danger of comparison. Your strengths will be different to mine, though possibly with some overlap. Mine are not better than yours and yours are not better than mine. Rather than worry about what other people can do that we can’t, we need to focus on our own strengths to discover what we can excel at.

I’ll leave you with that thought in the hope that you’ll be inspired to find out what your own strengths are. Comments welcome…

Yes, I’m still following Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System, though I use the term “following” a little loosely here because, the truth is, I’m way behind with it and I’ve also been struggling to see how I can apply some of it to my business. But that probably just means that I need to review the material and put some more thought and effort into it.

One thing Rich has concluded from running the course up to this point is that there have been too few “contact points” with us on the monthly program. I think that’s true. Life has a habit of getting in the way and providing distractions and without a regular reminder, the BGS has become a bit of a background activity for me. Even with the Q&A calls in between the monthly modules, I think communication could have been a lot better.

So after months of speculation, a couple of weeks ago we finally got firm dates for the seminar and it’s coming up fast – the weekend of February 10th and 11th. I guess I should have been waiting for the confirmation, ready to book flights as soon as it came in but, after all the mucking about, I kind of lost interest so I’m still considering my options.

The seminar itself is part of the course so that’s essentially free. With travel, accommodation and expenses, I reckon it will cost me around £850 to attend. Then I have to factor in a few days of lost work through travel and jet lag. Still, it’s doable.

So what’s the seminar all about?

Well, to be honest, I’m not really sure. And that kind of bothers me. When you sign up for a regular seminar, there’s usually a 300 page sales letter that tells you exactly what to expect but in this case, since it’s just part of the course, the details are non-existent.

We’re told that Rich will:

• tell us what’s working and what’s not (in relation to what? his business? do I care? does it have any relevance to my business?)
• review ‘exciting’ new developments in store for us (!)
• expand on topics from the Business Growth System

And pretty much, word-for-word, that’s it. One paragraph. I think it’s a shame when these same gurus are telling us that we have to “sell” even the “free” stuff that we’re not given more information in which to make up our minds. Especially since the committment to go is quite significant for many people in both time and cost.

Despite questions being made, there are no further details on the forum except for the usual banter from people saying how great it will be and what a good opportunity it will be for networking and making JV deals.

Ahh, the networking aspect…

If I had a penny for everytime I’d heard that the real benefit of attending these seminars is not to listen to the speakers but to meet lots of people and make deals, then I’d probably have enough to buy a King Size Mars Bar by now (and they’re really expensive these days). Just bumping into the right guy at a seminar could be worth, ooh, I don’t know, two hundred thousand dollars or more. Yeah, right!

The thing is, I’ve been to a lot of these seminars and met a lot of great people (and a lot of not-so-great people), some of whom I’ve stayed in contact with and remain friends with. But in every case, apart from offering a little help and advice, neither of us have been in a position to help the other with any kind of JV deal for the simple reason that we’re in completely different markets and, apart from that, are not at the level of business where we can offer such help.

For that to be the primary motivation for going to an Internet Marketing seminar, I think one of the following 3 things must be true:

1. You’re in the “how to make money” business. In this case, half the people at the seminar will be potential partners.

2. You’re a personal or business coach. I think there’s a parallel here with the “making money” business with it’s broad applicability and “business boosting” potential.

3. You know exactly the sort of person you need to make a deal with and can hunt them down by talking to as many people as possible until you find them. But even if you talk to everybody, you still might not find someone suitable.

I’m really talking here about business/sales partners and not about finding good copywriters or services like fulfilment houses. You don’t need to go to a seminar to find them though you might meet someone who could give you a recommendation. That’s the networking side of things. But you do need to know exactly what you want first.

Otherwise, the chances of meeting someone that can accelerate your particular business is slim. You may meet lots of like-minded people and make lots of friends but don’t expect your business to explode as a result.

Okay, rant over. For now…

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!)