First, some background on today's topic. I've had a terrible week. Notterrible as in I got nothing done because I did actually get quite a bit done.
But man, I struggled. And I didn't even really understand why.
I have to admit, most of what I got done happened between Thursday and Sunday.
Have you ever had a week like that where you struggled to get things done?
Or worse yet, struggled and didn't get anything done? Or maybe it just FELT LIKEyou didn't accomplish anything?
I hate weeks like that and I rarely feel that way. So why was this weekdifferent? At first, I couldn't put my finger on anything specific. Looking backand replaying my week in my mind didn't cause anything to stand out either. Inshort, nothing really clicked as the cause for the way I was feeling and acting.
So then I decided to do what I always do when I am trying to solve a problem. Ijust kinda let it go for a while and did something else.
And THEN, I finally figured out what the problem was!
It wasn't anything specific about THIS week. It was related to something I haddone several weeks ago. And it's very ironic that this was the cause of myproblem.
You see, several weeks ago I had drafted my 90 marketing plan. This documentdescribes what I plan to do in my Big Ticket Marketing efforts over a 3 monthperiod.
It's actually not that hard to figure out but it is something that you need totrack closely and see which weeks of marketing effort have the biggest payoff.In other words, you want to track which things you did that resulted in thebiggest payoff in sales, opt-ins by potential customers, joint ventures,branding, etc.
Basically all the stuff we need to do to as part of our Big Ticket Marketingefforts. We want to repeat those things that give us the largest payoff in ournext 3 month marketing plans and drop those things that didn't work out. And ofcourse we always try new things that we think will work, as well.
Anyway, the reason that I was struggling and feeling like I wasn't accomplishingthis week was because...
I was in OVERWHELM!
I had a lot of tasks I wanted to accomplish, because I'm an ambitious guy. Iwant to do well and I have a lot of goals I want to reach. This is all fine, butthe point of having a 90 day marketing plan is so that it will be easy to focuson the specific set of tasks that I need to accomplish each week by focusing onONLY ONE main area each week.
And normally, this system is very effective at keeping me focused. But,ironically, the act of creating the 90 day marketing plan made me look ateverything I had to accomplish in the next 3 months and I was sort of stuck inthat mode. I wasn't being effective at focusing on this weeks tasks because Iwas in OVERWHELM thinking about everything I had to get done, overall.
Have you ever experienced that?
I think we all have at one point or another.
However, I am disappointed that I didn't recognize what was going on sooner. Mybackground as a software engineer for Microsoft forced me to be prettydisciplined about focusing on what I needed to do and what our team needed to doevery week to accomplish our goals. And sometimes the ship cycles lasted between1.5 to 2 years.
Plus I have a black belt in Hapkido (a Korean martial art like a cross betweenTae Kwon Do and Aikido), which requires a lot of training discipline, patience,practice and long term view. But at the same time requires you to learn and workon smaller portions of the entire body of techniques, patterns, because that isthe only way you can really learn what you need to know.
Anyway, my point is that I should know better and yet I still fell into the fearfrom OVERWHELM. And I think everyone experiences not only overwhelm but otherfears about what they want to do as well.
The title of this article promised you a simple secret to keep your fears fromholding you back - from selling Big Ticket Items. Can you guess what the secretis?
I'll give you a hint. It's not really a secret at all. In fact everyone knowsabout this but unfortunately not everyone knows what to do especially in a caselike overwhelm.
Ready... the secret is ACTION!
Yes, ACTION. Now you are probably wondering... "Hey, wait a sec, you just saidyou were in overwhelm, how can action possibly be the secret for that?"
Napoleon Hill, in his book "Think and Grow Rich" said, "Action is the realmeasure of intelligence". Thomas Huxley said: "The great end of life is notknowledge but action." Intelligence means nothing, action means everything.
I knew what I had to do this week and yet I was struggling to do it. I even hada 90 day marketing plan with each week spelled out for me and yet I was stuck. Igot unstuck when I realized I was overwhelmed and decided to do something aboutit. What I decided to do was to take action. But the type of action I decided totake was influenced by my precious experience both in software development andmartial arts.
Have you heard of Kaizen?
Kaizen is a Japanese word which basically means 'continuous and incrementalimprovement'. The word came from when the Japanese were introduced to the workof W. Edward Deming when he was stationed in Japan to help them rebuild afterWorld War II. While there, Deming introduced them to what later became know asTotal Quality Management.
What I like about Kaizen is that it takes small action steps over time to solveproblems. The beauty of this approach is that you can take something thatcurrently seems daunting or puts you in overwhelm and start by only focusing onone small step that you can take to help improve the problem. The small step isso easy that you bypass your overwhelm and fears and just do that one smallstep. Then after a little while you introduce another small step andcontinuously improve the situation or problem until it is solved.
So in this way you CAN take action, even if it is very small, and slowly overtime each action you take has an effect that builds on all the others andcreates an unstoppable force until your problem has been solved. The fact thatthe action is so small makes it easy for you to do SOMETHING and not focus onhow much you have to do.
Maybe a short example will help. One of my goals is to increase the readershipof my articles and to get more people exciting about Big Ticket Marketing. Oneof the best ways to do that is to get my blog and my articles out to as manyreaders as I can. So this week, I wanted to get my Blog and my articles listedin as many E-zine and Electronic List directories as possible. I even havesoftware to help me do this.
Guess how many directories and list locations there are?
Well... there are over 1000 just in the built in database in the software I amusing.
I kept putting this off, because I had a bunch of other stuff I needed to getdone as well. But this was a major focus for me this week. Finally, what Idecided to do was to just add my information to ONE directory or list every timeI finished another task. Breaking it down so that I only had to worry about oneentry every so often REALLY helped me make some progress in this area, withoutworrying about how many there were.
I still have a long way to go, but my initial goal was to get listed in 20-25sites and I'm currently sitting at 17. A few more sites and I will have met mygoal!
Plus, Kaizen is really how I study martial arts so the process is very familiarto me even when applied to something else.
Ok, so the one 1 simple step you need to take anytime you have a fear to conqueror an overwhelming situation to deal with is to decide on one simple action thatyou can do in a very short amount of time that will ultimately help you solveyour problem. Do this, and then increase what you are doing in that area by alittle bit each time and before you know it you will have your problem solved.
Try this! It works amazingly well with very little effort. And you get a hugeamount of satisfaction knowing that you are taking steps to accomplish what youwant to get done... and you'll be doing it almost effortlessly.
By the way, if you want a great little resource on how to apply Kaizen, youshould get The Kaizen Way - One Small Step Can Change Your Life by RobertMaurer. It's a relatively recent book and a quick read at 182 pages. You canfind it on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble online. Maybe this is your first smallaction step.
Also, check out the resource box below for some websites that will give you someresources you can really use related to your Big Ticket Marketing efforts!
Copyright (C) 2005 Chuck Daniel, Like Magic Marketing, LLC -- All Rights Reserved.
Chuck is a former Microsoft software designer and program manager who spent more than a decade happily working on Email and CRM. Admittedly a seminar, workshop and information addict, Chuck left Microsoft to pursue his interests in personal development, internet, direct and information marketing and to promote and work for charitable causes.
Chuck Daniel
chuck@likemagicmarketing.com
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