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This week I hosted a web community’s call and one of the attendees mentioned that he often felt alone in his creative process. I told him that I too feel alone at times. He responded with disbelief, “Really?”
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Feelings are universal
Why are we surprised that other people feel the exact same way we do? The President of the United States feels alone at times. The guy who made your Big Mac yesterday feels alone. These are universal emotions and for some reason (that I think I know) you still label them as unique to you.
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On a recent episode of the No More Mondays Show my co-host Justin Lukasavige and I went through some very basic ideas if you’re starting a business.
Here’s the episode:
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Things To Do
1. Work for someone for free
Dave Ramsey gave this bit of advice on his show last week to a guy who was seriously depressed about his work life. The caller had a terrible work history and didn’t have good references. If you can work in your field of interest for free to prove your worth you’ll get on the job training and you may even prove you’re worth hiring full time.
2. Try to find successful people who want to be more successful
You don’t want to work with people who are on their last leg. You want to work with people who are on their way to being successful and working with you will help them get their faster. You won’t love all of your clients but from the beginning work to establish an ideal client then go find them!
3. Take care of the few people you have. Get your systems in place so you can scale later on
If you can’t help two people you can’t help 22. Paying attention to the clients in front of you is important if you want to get more of them. Every fire starts with a spark so focus on building your business consistently. If you pay attention to the details in the beginning you’ll scale more easily.
4. Keep it simple – find out what people want from people, not your own head
Rework is a great book to read about this topic. Planning is great but it doesn’t compare to learning from your customers. Taking too much time to “figure out what your customers want” becomes an excuse. The best way to learn what works is to do it and pay attention to the results. You can’t measure the success of your business without customers. You aren’t the measure of your effectiveness, they are. Get their feedback early and often and adjust accordingly.
Thing to not do:
1. Don’t be a burden when you’re helping someone.
Be professional and be present but don’t communicate the idea that you’ve got no boundaries or other clients. Be a help and don’t overstay your welcome.
2. Don’t take everyone who needs help
Set up boundaries on who you work with and how people can reach you. If your phone rings off the hook it’s because you gave people your phone number. I have found that those with the least to lose will take the most from you. Even if you are generously giving of yourself you can still put in boundaries so you can continue to take on clients that can afford to pay you your full wage.
3. Don’t be someone else because you’ll never win that game
God only made one of you. Stop trying to be like other people because they’re always going to be better at it than you are. Seek out your own voice, services and products. Develop yourself and use those heroes as inspiration. The world needs you, not a mini-version of your heroes.
The internet is changing business again. Renting content is the next phase of accessing content via the internet.
The stages of ownership.
- Access to individual physical goods in person only
- Access to physical goods by catalog, ordered through the mail and delivered to consumers through the mail.
- Same as #2 but goods could be ordered by phone then delivered by mail.
- Catalogs posted on-line – call or use internet to order physical goods.
- Digital goods sold on-line and delivered via mail or digitally.
- Individual digital goods delivered on-line.
- Catalog of digital goods offered through subscription while computer is on-line.
- Catalog of digital goods offered through subscription while computer is off or on-line.
When what you want can be digitized it can be much better for you and for the customer to create a subscription model.
Where I rent:
- Access 15,000,000 songs with Spotify.
- I rent access to tens of thousands of movies on Netflix.
- Amazon is considering offering books rentals.
- And then there’s the good ol’ library
What can you offer?
Can you offer something to rent? Do you have something you can digitize and offer on a continuous basis? Today’s consumers don’t need to own goods, they want to own access to goods.
One more example of renting access…my new office.
Do you have examples in your life of renting access vs. owning? Do you have anything you can offer a subscription to?