Today has finally arrived. Today I set about bottling my first pale ale containing rye malt
Pale Ale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
as a specialty grain. Today is the day I get to see if it has survived secondary. Today is the day. And I’m starting late.
On weekends, many times I don’t set my alarm. I wake up at 6am anyway or the dogs get all manner of excited and want to go out by then. Not today. No noise. No barking. Up at 8:15 am. Ugh. So much to do: stretch, clean kitchen, move fermentor, sanitize bottles, prime beer, bottle, label, etc.
Oh yeah, and post about today’s activities.
Why?
I have decided to take a more personal turn with my blogs. Yes, I’ll still write about marketing strategies, business practices, interpersonal relationships, changing the lives of others and so on. I have listened to your voices and will make good changes. The topics upon which I have received the most feedback are, in order of responses, most to least: photography, personality types and homebrewing beer. Awesome. More attention to them and today it is beer‘s turn.
Do you feel like you are speaking into a dark hole? Like your marketing efforts are only appreciated by ghosts and crickets? You are not alone.
Many of us feel like we speak, but no one hears our voices. The end result is feeling voiceless in the world. Which is worse? Be able to speak, though not heard or not being able to speak? Is there really a worse? Are not both results the same? No responses. No leads. No customers. No sales.
Pulling from the weeds
Marketing is about placement and message. Where you say is as important as what you say. Writing great copy for the wrong audience will not succeed. First, define your audience and know where they. Pull yourself out of the weeds and into the fairway of success. Do not spend your time and efforts with those known to not buy what you sell. Get out of the tall grass.
Once your audience is defined, now develop marketing to meet their pain or in pull them into their pleasure. Spend your time with them. Get to know them. Build a relationship.
Plotting a new course
There are so many expressions for finding success, they seem like cliches: start with the end in mind, know what you want and get it, define the end and plan backward. All of them have two things in common: a clearly defined goal and a way to get there. Clarity of goal and path are a must. One must know exactly what one wants and how to get there. A poorly defined goal will lead to a poor path.
Suppose you are in charge of building a bridge across a river. They only given requirements is that it must join two particular roads. Is that enough to start building? No? Why not? Why do people start a business with a less defined goal?
To build such a bridge, there are many factors to consider: length, structure weight and strength, type of bridge, building materials, design, function, etc. Scale models of various bridges will be built. Sight lines with the surrounding geography will be considered. Plans have to be approved. Bids for construction have to be made. All of that before one scoop of dirt is moved.
Do not set out into the world of business without defining your goals as clearly. Know your send. Make your plan. Start moving.
Structure du pont Corneille (Photo credit: zigazou76)
Life. It seems so complicated and multiple faceted. How can it ever be simple? There are so many parts. What do you mean there are only three? Huh?
Nature is a good teacher. Trees that grow too tall for their roots are toppled by the wind. The forest provides shelter and food for many animals. Organisms have exactly what the need, nothing more and nothing less. Life that thrives in nature has structure, community and purpose. The three legs of life in nature is true for the human as well.
The unstructured life is a mess. Any small addition event is seen as a crisis. There is nothing to support all what goes on from day to day. The person without structure has problems finishing tasks on time, has a harder time learning new skills and ideas, will continue to be late and lacks any semblance of balance.
Structure is what one uses to produce a life full of completion. Structure must exist for one to fulfill their potential, give meaning and provide satisfaction. Without structure, one will continuously miss the mark.
Consider the well tuned athlete. Is it simple genetics? No. It is strict routine. Not for a day. Not for a year. For many days; many years. Everyday is planned to ensure all portions of the workout and nutrition are met. Everyday is planned so that every minute is used and nothing is wasted. Structure is what creates the well tune athlete.
Community is support
In 1624, John Donne wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. The following lines are from Meditation XVII (written in modern English):
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
Here Donne illustrates that each of us are better as part of a whole. We feel for one another. We laugh together. We cry together. As part of a community, we have more resources for learning, for teaching, for growing. Being a part of a community gives each of us far more than we have alone.
Community is a key to growth and understanding. Find the community you need to grow the ways you desire. Listen. Learn. Speak. Teach. Grow.
Live a Purpose
Ever wonder why you are? What your purpose in life is? Tired of wondering around in a haze, not knowing where up and down are? The human was designed to have a purpose. You have one.
Purpose gives one’s life direction and dedication. The athlete who has been shaped to run the marathon will never fulfill that goal without purpose. Purpose is what causes the need for structure to appear and the desire to seek community. It is a sense of purpose that keeps one on course when all else has gone by the way. Purpose creates the drive, the desire, the persistence. When one knows and lives their purpose, no obstacle will be seen as too great to overcome. Have purpose. Find purpose.
Use all three legs of your life. You will be complete.
A 1914 half-sovereign minted in Sydney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Passion. It keeps you on course. It keeps you moving. It brings action and motivation.
When the going gets tough, passion will keep the you going. Where is it that you are going? What is it you want to do? What does done mean?
Enter clarity.
Clarity is how your target is defined. It allows you to know what you seek, what it feels like, how it smells, how it tastes. Clarity defines what you want.
Knowing what you want in life to such a high level is paramount for success, no matter how you choose to define it. Success has to be personally defined. It cannot be defined by someone else. Success is your goals, your dreams, your aspirations. Know what they are. See them. Feel them. Get very, very clear on them.
Clarity cuts through the fog. It leads to understanding. It guides through the rain. Clarity allows action to be well directed. It pushes passion through all obstacles. While passion is the fuel that drives your engine to success, clarity keeps everything running.
Get crystal clear on your goals. See each step. Fully define what you want. Suppose you want a new car. What model? What color? What options? How much work will you need to do to achieve it? How many calls? How many sales? That is clarity. It is more than just the end goal, it is all the steps in between.
Want to sing at the Apollo theater in Harlem? Don’t settle for performing at the local dinner club. See that goal. See the work. Do the work.
That is what clarity does. It pushes aside all the “can’ts” and “wont’s”. Get clear. See your path. Now go.
Ok, stop! Stop what you are doing! Move over! Be quiet! Yeah, you!
It is time to get real with yourself. You are the reason you do not have success. Yes, you. It is not your circumstances. It is not your lack of education. It is you. It is only you.
Look in the mirror. There you will find the person who is holding you back; there is who is in your way. There is the obstacle to over come. There is why you don’t have what you want. There is why you don’t succeed.
Yes, it is hard to take. Yes, the journey is unfair. Yes, you have a challenge. Yes, yes, yes.
We get in our own way time after time. We justify to ourselves why we do not have time to do something. We invent excuses why things do not happen. We blame others. We point fingers. We do not take responsibility. Everyone of those actions speaks volumes why we don’t have what we want, don’t have the success, don’t have the lifestyle, don’t have the marriage. All of that. We are the problem.
We are also the solution. You hold the keys to your success. Yes, you. Not some guru on television or the Internet. You and only you. You have to do the work. You have to get the experience. You must obtained the skills. A coach can help guide you, show you direction, point out a weakness. A mentor can show you better ways and better avenues. Only you can take the field. Only you can walk down the road. Your success is your business. It does not belong to someone else. It belongs to you.
Reaching success is not a quick trip. It takes dedication and determination. There are pitfalls and problems. There are distractions and detours. The path is not straight. It weaves and forks, zigs and zags. It requires a plan.
From time to time, your determination and dedication will be tested. Obstacles will arise that will seem insurmountable. They will require rethinking and redirection. Having a mentor will greatly help your efforts. The right coaching will teach you need techniques, give you new directions.
Going the distance takes perseverance. Going in the distance in the wrong direction will only result in wasted effort, leading to frustration and emptiness. Get the mentor you need. Get the training you need. Go the distance to Success.
Over and over, the same mistakes get made when marketing. It matters little if it is a video or a blog post or a capture page. All have the same mistake, the same theme. They are all too serious.
The video
In the video, the person pitching the latest and greatest whatever is well dressed and groomed. Other than their mouth, they hardly move. After all, they have a serious business to offer. They want to be taken seriously. Therefore, they are serious, so they present serious. Is there any other way?
Write to me
Blog posts that fall into the too serious category are long and boring. They ramble on and on, use eloquent and awkward speech, and seem as though their authors have swallowed a Thesaurus. The grammar is near perfect, punctuation correct and don’t have contractions. Readers leave nearly as quickly as the arrive.
Combining all of the worst
The long landing pages combine all of the bad aspects of videos and blog posts. They go on and on. The never-ending text is only interrupted by bad videos. The text is laid to use all the colors of the rainbow, multiple font sizes, bold and underline. The content is bad enough, so the author assaults the reader every which way. Oh good grief.
Have fun
Why all the seriousness? Lighten up a bit. Don’t be sophomoric. Be entertaining! Be Lively! Get your point across clearly in a relaxed manner. Don’t worry about perfection, worry about value. Introduce a comma, splice to see if anyone is paying attention. Sure, get the spell and grammar correct (at least mostly), but not to the point of awkward absurdity. After all, this is a post to get attention and make a connection. It is not a term paper or a doctoral thesis.
I must admit. I am tired. Very tired. I am tired of placing ads, writing blogs, writing articles, pushing tweets, pinning interesting content, making funnels…all to get leads that are not there. Oh, I get clicks. Clicks cost me money. Clicks that not become leads most me more. Arg.
I am tired of seeing others do the same thing. They get clicks. They get leads. Some of the leads convert. They make sales. Yeah, I am excited for them. I am frustrated.
Being tired and frustrated is a part of being an entrepreneur. Being tired and frustrated is part of creating your own path. It is to be expected. It is how you learn where you need direction, where you need to work on yourself.
Integrity: being complete; undivided; focused; true; unimpaired.
Whatever the synonym, integrity is at the center of SMILE. It is at the center of everything done at 5 Point Management. It is at the center to keep us balanced. It is the center of who we are.
Too many people use Integrity as a buzzword. It gets banded about as if it were a shuttlecock in a badminton game on a well groomed lawn. Overused, overstated and under performing. That is how integrity gets pushed today.
Integrity is too key to allow such trivialities. One has to have integrity to last, to be seen as honest and to be a lasting leader. Politicians claim to have it, then display they do not. Scoundrels posing as businessmen claim it, then use practices that are immoral.
Integrity is not something faked. It must be a part of who one is. Must be in the heart. Must be in the mind. It must be the center of everything.
In the word SMILE, the letter I balances the other four. It gives symmetry to the folding point. It is the center. Integrity was chosen for the I in SMILE to remind us, to balance us, to focus us. Integrity is who we are. We are it.
What a incredible weekend it has been. Blogging while Justin Woolf was reviewing keyword search and the importance of being precise and drilling into a niche. Advertisement reviews with Sophia Rashkin. Getting videos critiqued by Benny Bells and Kevin Levonas. Being in the Loyal 9 Revolution headquarters. Being with other marketers. Hearing their trials. Learning from their mistakes.
No words can accurately described what the weekend brought. Clarity and peace. Willingness and direction. Longing and anticipation. Such pale terms.
Being with the Loyal 9 and Team Rashkin for a few hours is a privilege. Being with them for a whole weekend? Awesome. Having them training and reviewing your work directly? Priceless. That was this weekend.
Meaningless
All the superlatives in the word are without meaning if no action gets taken afterward. If nothing comes of this weekend, it was only a good time in New Jersey. Action must be taken. Action will be taken.
Now the action has direction. Now the skills to correct, aim again and go are learned. Now the understanding of good marketing has been absorbed. Now is the time. Now is the day. All will be seized. It is all mine.
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