An Email Players subscriber (not sure he wants me naming him) asks:
“What’s the best approach when you get stuck and make little progress? There are times that sales go down or clients leave. Then I try to get things back on track but sometimes don’t work. So,when you get stuck is it better to work harder or take a more cool approach to kinda build momentum?”
My answer:
That’s just the ebb and flow of business and will always happen.
My advice is to focus on what you can control and ignore what you can’t.
You have 100% control over being consistent, out working the other guy, giving better service, creating new offers, studying your market more intensely, doing something every day to grow your email list, fanning the flames of customer & JV relationships, asking for referrals when applicable (any time you get a testimonial or just a compliment from a client, basically), making yourself a little better at what you do today than you were yesterday (1% better, smarter, etc per day is 350+% better in a year), investing your time & money wisely, getting up a little earlier if you have to, going to bed a little later if you have to, and doing those things consistently.
That’s all under your control.
And 99% of your competitors are likely not doing them all.
It may not seem like it, but when slow times hit it’s an opportunity.
Specifically, it’s an opportunity to get better/smarter/more cunning, more prepared to seize more marketshare as your lazy competition drops out (if you’re feeling the pinch, you can bet your arse they are too), slacks off, falls more into the bottomless pit of majoring in the minors from listening to goo-roos, wasting money, flailing around.
To use an analogy:
Focus on eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, sunlight… while ignoring the scale other than as a way to periodically make sure you’re on track. Same principle applies when your business is “out of shape.”
On a similar note:
Already this year I have been getting more mindset and inner game questions like the above than I have the last several years prior. A lot of businesses are not sure how to deal with ebbs & flows, becoming plagued with self doubt, second-guessing themselves as what they were doing is not working as well now, have confidence problems, and the list goes on.
Not hearing this so much from older customers. A lot of this is due to age, probably.
But younger men, especially those who got in during the lockdowns when everyone and their mother suddenly became a content creator, course creator, copywriter, etc without really understanding the fundamentals of what they were doing and had a free platform to pitch from… and this is their first taste of a market pull back.
Always remember:
Solomon wasn’t just whistlin’ dixie when he said there ain’t nothing new under the sun.
Never has been, never will be.
This madness you see will pass, things will get better, business will grow again… only to hit the next downturn after that, after which it goes back up, drops, up, down, sideways, then up, breaks down, shoots up… the game never ends.
You can’t control the market forces.
But you can control YOU and how you react, exploit, use those forces.
Something to keep in mind, especially if you subscribe to the paid Email Players newsletter here:
Ben Settle
