When Things Get Tough
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First, my apologies for being out of touch, but I believe you deserve an explanation as to what’s going on over here at my offices.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a guest post for JulieAnne Jones’ blog about what to do when things get tough in your business. In it, I offer six tips for navigating tough times successfully. One of those is to be honest with your “tribe” when things aren’t perfect. So here goes…
You may or may not have already heard, but we did, in fact, cancel the live event that I had planned for this weekend.
The Renaissance Mom Experience was to be one of those “powerful, life changing events” – leaving a big impact on each of the attendees. At this point, I believe we have refunded everyone. If I missed you, please contact my team.
We’re still planning to do something in terms of a virtual event. That will begin on Sunday, August 29. If you are on the event notification list, you’ll learn more soon enough.
But in the meantime, I’m putting out all kinds of fires at headquarters. So many unexpected “emergencies” have developed (from cancelling the event and other things), that I’m doing all I can to keep my head on straight this week.
Like finding out that the IRS has fouled up every payroll tax filing for me for the past YEAR. So now we’re digging through the archives to clean up THEIR mess (Bonnie, if you’re reading this, don’t worry. Your payroll tax payments are fine, it’s the paper returns they’ve goofed up! No worries!)
And that’s just the tip of this week’s iceberg. Some of the issues directly impact me, others indirectly (like my bookkeeper’s family issues), but all of them are weighing heavy on me right now.
Which means all of my normal “routine” activities have gone by the wayside.
That’s the bad news.
Sorry, there’s no newsletter, no blog posts, and very little contact from me at the moment.
Add to that the fact that we’re closing the offices for the Labor Day Holiday and you can see I’m “up to my elbows in alligators” as an old friend used to say.
Our offices will be closed from September 2-7 (me and all the staff are taking time off. No promises on if we’ll be checking email much or voice mail at all). We’ll re-open on September 8.
There’s a reason my company’s logo is a phoenix.
Some awesome new products and services will be rolling out in September and later this fall. But between now and then, I’m going to be very hard to connect with as the dust settles from the fallout of this week.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Well, in all honesty, because I’ve been feeling like a fraud for NOT telling you sooner. I mean, I coach YOU to be completely transparent in your business and let your teams, your clients and your associates know what’s really going on. People know you’re not perfect, so to present that illusion to the world is tantamount to living a lie.
I would be a fraud to pretend that all is well in the land of Lisa this week. It’s not. Far from it.
But this, too, shall pass. And then, we’ll be back on track and right as rain.
Yes, you’ll be hearing from me in the interim, but not on any particular schedule. Those of you active in any of my coaching courses will see a delay in course delivery – BUT all content WILL be delivered. As always, you can email or call and we’ll do our best to help you with any questions you have, just realize it might take us longer than usual to reply – especially during the Labor Day holiday.
I’m doing everything in my power to keep all the promises I’ve made to everyone and not work myself to death in the process.
Lessons Learned
Every once in a while, you have to make time to take time to deal with life. I would be a fake and a phony if I didn’t practice what I preach.
I know there are at least a few people that would try to cover their tracks and put a marketing “spin” on something like this.
“We’ve decided to ‘go virtual’ to let more people experience the event.”
“Special pricing is open AGAIN – but only for twelve seconds.”
“Bring your friends, your dog, your cat, and a total stranger for FREE.”
“Get fifteen extra bonuses when you sign up before the sun sets today.”
Blah, blah, blech.
No can do. We priced this thing at an incredibly affordable rate (less than $1000 including your room and meals), so I’m not going to cheapen the value of the content by playing those games. The plain truth is that we didn’t sell enough tickets for me to justify keeping everyone’s money (including our awesome sponsors) to bring out these amazing speakers to share their story with a teensy weensy audience. I could have kept the money and played to an audience of twenty people, but it just felt inauthentic and unfair when we were touting this as a large scale event with about 300 people.
Other people may feel comfortable playing that game, but to me, it’s just dishonest and makes you look desperate.
If I were a speaker, I’d want a better return on my time investment. If I were a sponsor, I’d want all the eyeballs originally promised. As an attendee, I might be excited about a smaller, more intimate group, but I might be bummed that I wasn’t meeting enough people.
In business, you have to know when to cut your losses, and sometimes that means nixing a pet project. Cancelling this event was one of the top five heartbreaks of my life. Not because it meant losing income (it’s only money, after all), but because of the mission I still feel compelled to serve – to help mompreneurs bring balance to their life and their work without apologies.
Time and again, that was what I was hearing – apologies about how it was too far, too short notice, too many days, etc. Which tells me the idea was good, but the offer wasn’t good enough. But that’s another post for another day.
Simply put, I know there’s a demand for the material, so we’re working out a way to deliver a portion of the content from the live event in a virtual format starting August 29.
When you cancel an event like this, there are lots of egos to stroke and apologies to be made – and that’s just at my house! The stress my husband and I endured during the summer was epic. Cancelling the event led to all kinds of inquisitions, concerns, and arguments. Again, another post for another day.
Then there’s fees and contracts you have to honor. We’re still working on that.
And THEN the IRS rears their ugly head? Yeesh. Is it any wonder I need a break?
It’s created a lot of chaos, uproar, and difficulty that I simply can’t ignore. Nor would I want to, in truth. So I’m asking for your patience and a little understanding over the next couple of weeks. I’m not ignoring you. We’re just SWAMPED!
And to be clear, no one’s dying, and we’re not closing up shop any time soon. I just need a couple of weeks to get these fires put out and get business back on track.
The GOOD news, is that after the Labor Day holiday is over, we’ve got a TON of great things planned to help you make the last few months of the year your best ever. It pains me to have to wait to share it with you, but I’ve got to clear the path, first.
When the dust settles, there’s gonna be a major blog series about this, you can be sure.
Until then, there are a couple of things you might be interested in:
- If you’re in direct sales, we’ve got special pricing on the videos from Home Party Solution LIVE until August 31. This is the video from last year’s 3-day event. We go end-to-end through the book, with additional bonus content.
- Get registered for the virtual version of The Renaissance Mom Experience (free, even though the site’s not completely updated yet. It’s on the to-do list for the week)
- 30 Days to Renaissance (also free, you can register in the sidebar over there —>) is a 30-day e-course to help you get from Reluctance to Renaissance in your life and business. Just proves I try to practice what I preach.
LASTLY, if you have questions, concerns or comments, we ARE checking the email and the phone messages (and you can DM me on twitter). Just don’t expect an immediate response. Things are plain crazy here at the moment.
In more than a dozen years of business, I have never felt so much in a pressure cooker before. And if you’ve been with me for any length of time, you know how seriously I take my client relationships. For me to basically put business “on hold” to put out fires is a strong indicator of the level of chaos we’re feeling right now.
But sometimes, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Thanks for your understanding.
Is Your Niche Profitable? – Part One: Competition
Scrolling through my email, I found an article from a couple years back, written by Derek Gehl (famed Internet Marketing whiz). In it, he outlined a series of questions that Internet Marketers need to ask themselves before pursuing a market niche. As I read on, it became clear that this series of questions applied to any business owner, not just internet marketers. Not every niche is profitable – and not every profitable niche will stay profitable for the long term. What can you do to build a profitable business in a niche strong/big enough to keep you afloat? Here’s my take:
Competition
Competition is a sticky wicket that’s not always easy to discern. When you look at indirect competition (similar product or service, different niche) as well as direct competitors (exactly the same niche, product and/or service), you can pull your hair out trying to determine how you are unique in the marketplace. What it really boils down to is opportunity costs vs. value. Customers have to choose one way or another. You objective is to present a value proposition that makes it easy for the customer to give what I call the affirmative buying decision to YOU, and no one else. Because when it comes to money, there’s more than just your niche competing. There’s the day care, the health club, the tax man, and a host of other people. There’s only so much money to go around, and your client has to decide where every penny goes. Before competitive businesses are even in the picture, they need to know that your offering is a valuable asset and worth the investment of their hard earned cash. In that respect, you are competing with EVERYTHING. On the other hand, what makes you valuable and unique could be so different than anything else that’s out there that you’re really not competing with anything. See how vexing this can be?
A client of mine is building an online herb shop. She has many of the same products that can be bought other places. However, because some of her herbs are wild sourced – and limited in quantity – she can charge substantially more for those products. These herbs become her flagship products – even though they’ve got very limited availability. So on one hand, she’s competing with every other herbalist online, but on the other, she’s got a unique, hard to find, in demand product with which no one can compete. Either way, her potential clients still need to decide to spend that money on herbs in the first place, which is what complicates the whole “competition” discussion.
Suggestion: Look for ways to be distinctive in the marketplace, but remember that ultimately it comes down to the value your customer sees in making the investment in the first place. Here are my formulas for value and disappointment:
value = (client expectations) + x – (total client investment)
disappointment = client results – client expectation (when the value is negative, the disappointment is greater)
Your job is to keep disappointment low and value high. That’s part of the equation for customer loyalty.
But here’s my big take away: You have to do what moves you. If you want to be the 1,003rd shoe salesman on your block, it may be hard to run a successful business. Then again, your passion and commitment to offering high-quality shoes at with a value proposition that’s second to none may be just the ticket to your success. In my own community, Walgreen’s has a habit of moving in across the street from Rite Aid. Within a few months the Rite Aid closes up shop. I’ve not researched it, but I’m sure Walgreen’s doesn’t do this by accident. They know they’ve got a viable market (or Rite Aid wouldn’t be there in the first place), and they believe they can offer a better value proposition than their “competition” – and they must be doing something right.
Who am I to say you can’t be the Walgreen’s of your niche? You can totally do that. It happens every day.
Exploding Websites for Fun and Profit
I am jealous – a little.
Okay, a lot. But it will pass soon enough.
My pal @elizabethpw remodeled her website. I’m sharing some of the pertinent insights to my audience on my direct sales blog, but today, I wanted to share the discoveries that are pertinent to you.
See I created that site eons ago, when I was just a fledgling online person. I shunned WordPress (not one of my better decisions, I’ll admit). I was creating pages by hand (still do sometimes). I thought I was doing well.
Then the other day, I got an email from Liz Pabon, where she wrote this:
Our inner knowing is like an attic filled with great treasures made up of our knowledge, experiences and wisdom. And sometimes those treasures are blocked or hidden by the cobwebs of self-neglect.
And I got to thinking about all the “stuff” that’s crammed into that site. 2 years of teleclasses (yes, 2 freakin’ years worth). Classes, courses, downloads and handouts. All of it muddled, mixed around, and hard to navigate.
I was making it difficult for people to buy from me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like earning my keep. I enjoy getting paid for the contribution I make. I think I do a pretty good job of sharing what works, and it’s important to my family that I’m compensated appropriately for my “genius work” as my coach calls it.
But buried within layers of links, pages and other subterfuge, it wasn’t easy to do business with me. And the irony is, I tell people time and again to make it easy for customers to do business with you.
I’m accessible. I’m probably too accessible. If someone sends an email, a tweet or a facebook post, I usually respond – and pretty quickly when I’m able. And I answer questions, provide tons of advice and strategies to help my clients and strangers who may never be my clients.
But on more than one occasion, I’ve had people say the very same thing that I read at the top of Elizabeth’s blog post (except that my name’s Lisa and not Elizabeth).
But in my own head, I thought I was being really clear. I was following all the “rules” about building an opt-in list, creating info products, doing launches, and sharing “free content” with my followers (you know, “the what” but not “the how” stuff we’ve been fed).
So I’m blowing it up – for fun AND profit.
I’ve had this vision for an entire training program much like a college curricula for direct sales pros that want to run their business like a real business. But it’s built around small group coaching – classroom style – and that violates “the rules” of online marketing.
See, according to “the rules”, I’m supposed to create content once, get paid to do it, and then re-package it into an info-product I can sell over and over. It’s a great way to produce “passive” income, but if you follow “the rules”, the bulk of that revenue comes during the product launch, and then trickles in over the lifetime of the product. The more affiliates you have promoting the launch, the more money you stand to make when it launches. Which is why you hear a LOT about people that have multi-million dollar launches, but then you never hear how the product does on the back end.
Things that make me go hmmm…
I’ve been doing this “info marketing thang” for a couple of years now, and when I was green, I was following “the rules” religiously. Step-by-step, cranking out teleclasses, setting up continuity programs, etc. And in the last three weeks it hit me that I wasn’t being authentic in my business.
For as much as I enjoy “passive” income. I had become a slave to “the rules” – and they really didn’t fit me or the way I wanted to do business.
Here’s the truth I’ve learned in the past two years in my online business:
- People will buy info products, but they’ll pay more to work directly with you.
- Info products by themselves are mostly worthless. They sit on shelves and collect dust. I think it was Dan Kennedy that said 20% of your customers will never even open the product. And to get USED to that. Um, sorry. That does not compute for me.
- My business is seeing a shift towards hands-on help that guides people through the info products. And that’s because…
- People get better results with hands-on help.
- Small groups rock. The synergy, the energy and the masterminding that goes on is exponentially better than self-study, and bridges the gap between info products and live events.
- The biggest payday happens at product launch. BUT…
- Big launches leave big gaps in your cash flow.
There’s nothing wrong with helping people and getting paid to do it, folks. That’s what teachers and mentors have been doing for centuries. The catch is to price yourself accordingly for the services you perform. There’s always someone who thinks you’re too expensive, and someone that sees you as the bargain basement extra meal deal. The key is to find your own value in that mix and be fair with your pricing. There’s NO disputing the fact that hands-on help is worth more than info-products all day long.
That’s why you’re seeing a surge in live events, big ticket “masterminds” and ultra pricey one-on-one coaching programs – complete with swarming, affiliate-driven promotional launches.
But you can’t feasibly launch a big ticket item every month to keep cash flow consistent.
Even the “guru’s” are filling those gaps with smaller ticket product launches, generally joint ventures in a teleclass (small group) format. They can launch them every couple of months, and both partners benefit. In fact, one multi-million dollar guru has already launched 6 products in the first 3 months of the year. Talk about bombarding their audience!
But between affiliate and JV promotions, the cash flow keeps coming in.
Take a look at who’s doing what this year. You’ll see most of them moving away from continuity-based models (especially in light of the new California legislation), and towards more mid-price ($300-500), “one-time-only” tele-series and product launches. It serves the same purpose, but at a higher price point, and with fewer customer service issues.
My own business is taking a similar stance – albeit at a much lower price point in most instances. We’re blowing up HomePartySolution.com – and the entire online community that goes with it – to create a more streamlined user interface, and a more lucrative business platform for the direct sales portion of our coaching business.
In short, I’m going to make it so easy for people to do business with me that my clients will wonder what happened.
It’s not an easy process, by any means, and we’re considering documenting the process to help YOU shorten the learning curve if you ever want to do this in your own business. I estimate the entire site will be down about a month to test everything and make it all operational again – with all the new content we’re adding to boot.
The only thing that will still be live on that site is the home page opt-in for new ezine subscribers. I still plan on sending out the weekly ezine, and generating content behind the scenes. But we won’t be selling anything for about a month over there.
So how am I going to keep the employees paid and the family fed?
With a GI-NORMOUS product launch over here. 
Tickets for The Renaissance Mom Experience are slated to go on sale April 15. You can sign up for the advance notification list on that page. You have been warned.
The cool thing is that I’m able to continue to do what I love in a way that I truly enjoy. I am able to connect with the very people I enjoy helping and they are seeing better results because of it. I’m able to leverage myself as well (more on that in another post), and continue to grow both segments of my business (both here and on the direct sales side of things). I can’t wait for you all to see what new things we have in store this quarter.
What about you? I’d love your thoughts and feedback on this. Share your comments below, or send me a note on twitter.
Saying “No” is Sexy Part Two: Size Doesn’t Matter
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of backlash from info-marketers, coaches and others that follow the “freebie opt-in” model to build their lists. In my previous post, I mentioned a new opt-in gift I created for my own list that I think will benefit them, AND will help grow my marketing list at the same time. To be clear, I do not have a problem with the freebie opt-in model. In fact, I encourage it with many of my new clients as a safe, simple way to encourage people to build the “Know, Like and Trust Factor” with their potential customers.
But these “back-lashers” have started complaining about the ROI, “smash and grab” and generally grumbling about how free isn’t really free, because ultimately someone is paying – either for the time to create the freebie, to sustain the giveaway, or on the back end when there’s an upsell.
To me, that’s a red flag that someone isn’t being sexy in their business. They’re saying “yes” because it’s the thing to do, instead of doing it because it’s what they want to do.
In Gary Vee’s book, Crush It, he makes a comment about how he starts his video show the same way every time, and because of that, he loses a percentage of his potential audience because they don’t like his opening. As a business owner, it drives him nuts that he could have more people wat
ching, but he chooses to stay the course because it’s being true to who he is.
Gary’s being sexy by saying “no” to normal and saying “yes” to memorable.
I have my own confession: my list is not large. I don’t have umpteen gajillion followers on twitter. And I’m happy with that. Would I love tens of thousands of people? Maybe. But the thousands that I do have know me, like me, and trust me enough that they spend money with me regularly. My list is incredibly responsive and on twitter alone, I averaged about $15 for each follower I had in 2009. I’m not bragging here. I’m illustrating a point.
When it comes to lists, size isn’t as important as responsiveness.
And yet, it’s the same mentality we’ve been seeing from online marketers. Put your free samples out there, start raking in people, and see who shakes out and who sticks.
Others charge for everything and wouldn’t think of giving away a scrap of their information. I had a teleclass guest once tell me that everything that she says is under copyright the minute it comes out of her mouth. She was so concerned about getting credit for her work, that she was making herself look foolish on the call. Needless to say, I won’t be asking her back any time soon.
Neither option is the be-all, end-all. In fact, I think there are times where both are appropriate. To me, though, you shouldn’t grump and complain when you get the expected results from the work you do.
If you give something away for free, there will always be a trick-or-treater/tire kicker that just wants the free stuff. It’s the nature of the beast. Don’t begrudge them the very thing you’ve offered them. If you don’t feel good about giving it away to everyone and getting nothing in return, you probably shouldn’t be giving it away in the first place.
That’s what happened with our Super Summit. Our very first event was completely free, with the option to purchase the MP3′s after you registered. Right away we had problems with people that signed up, got the dial in number and unsubscribed. It made it difficult to contact them to share bonus content, etc. But instead of grumbling, I figured those just weren’t the kind of people I wanted to work with in the first place.
Now we charge a small admission fee, and while we don’t get as many sign-ups as when it was free, that minimal barrier to entry has resulted in more qualified customers, better conversion rates, and happier people all around. I feel good that everyone that registers will get an amazing value for their paltry investment (and they do), and customers are ecstatic that they only had to pay a few bucks to get such good, pitch-free content.
Another incredible thing that happened was that fewer people were asking for concessions on the event. At the first summit, we had dozens of requests for free access because someone couldn’t make it live to a call. People asked us to make the calls available for individual purchase so they could just buy the ones they missed. Dozens of people already getting free content asking for more free content.
Really? Um. No.
We tried the individual purchases at our last summit – and sold one. One copy of one audio. Aside from the amount of effort we put into creating the individual products, the demand just wasn’t there. So we didn’t do it this time. Instead we kept the registration fee low, and offered early bird pricing for any audios purchased before the event.
You’d be surprised how many people turn down virtually free content just because it’s not free.
And that’s okay with me.
Because the ones that say “Yes, my business is worth $3″ are the people I want to work with. They’re the folks that recognize the real value of the content – and will probably put it to good use. They’re the folks who recognize that you can’t spend $3 to talk to ANY of the people at this event, but they can listen to all of them share their great ideas for next to nothing.
And this time, I’ve had less than five people play the ‘poor me’ card and ask for free access to audios for the event.
And that’s okay with me.
So while this event may not add tens of thousands of people to my list, I DO know that the folks that are signing up want what we’re sharing with them, and are willing to shell out a few bucks to have access to the content. It’s not about the number of folks – it’s their effectiveness, responsiveness, and VALUE to me as a business owner that matter much more.
But I still have my free weekly ezines and my opt-in freebies. I still have a marketing ‘funnel’, if you will. And that’s okay too. Some people are very leery when it comes to spending even $3 with a total stranger. So we feed them a little info from time to time, and encourage them to get to know us so they can make an educated decision. Frankly, if you don’t know me, like me and trust me enough to spend $3 with me, I don’t WANT your money. I want my customers eagerly whipping out their wallets because they know in their core the value I provide. They know that any investment I ask of them will return ten to a hundred-fold. They know that it’s not a cost, it’s an investment and they’re willing to make that investment – not in me, but in themselves.
That’s the kind of list I’m building. It may be smaller than some, but it’s mightier than others.
And that’s okay by me.
Sorry Seth, I Have to Disagree…
One of my favorite authors in my known galaxy is Seth Godin. He’s a proliferate pontificate on marketing, life, and other good stuff.
Today marks the first day in my LIFE that I think the man is stright up wrong and needs a brick upside his head.
And that could just be because my life experience is markedly different than his. Who knows.
In a recent post about why you should, or shouldn’t write a book, Seth makes a fatal generalization.
He says “Out of context, a 140 character tweet cannot change someone’s life.”
WRONG and WRONG.
I have never felt my skin crawl faster. And I LOVE Seth’s work. Really. I do!
I have read brilliant tweets. Short snippets from friends and strangers that have made course corrections in my own life.
Some had only the context of knowing the author (thank you @unmarketing, @chrisbrogan, @lkr, @elizabethPW, @tomziglar) – so by knowing them to some degree, I suppose that changes the “context” of things.
But others (because I occasionally DO read my ‘all tweets’ stream) were random people that I may or may know have any inkling of that said something funny, emotionally charged, or just made a life-altering statement.
Usually in 120 characters or less, because that way you can re-tweet.
And dear Mr. Godin, if you ever USED twitter, you might understand that.
I guess the thing that irritates me is also the salve to soothe me. See Seth has never used twitter, so his sideways assessment makes sense. He’s a writer/blogger at heart, so of course he’d make the assertion that blogs impact lives.
But to summarily write off a medium you’ve never used (except to broadcast his posts – I’ll get back to that in a minute), is a disservice to his readers.
One of the things that set me apart early on as a coach was that I didn’t spout off about things I didn’t understand. If I didn’t have wordpress experience, I didn’t talk about how great it was to my clients. I stuck to what I knew. When I fell in love with twitter, I shared with my clients how I was picking up THOUSANDS of dollars in my business because of it – and HOW I was doing it.
But NEVER (at least not that I can recall) have I ‘coached’ someone to do something that I hadn’t tried myself in some way.
And sorry, Seth, but I think this is a place where you have no leg to stand on. You’ve never used twitter as more than a placeholder or a broadcast mechanism for your blog – which is like being part of the twitter counterculture.
That said, I also want to point out how your one tweet (which was nothing more than a broadcast of your latest blog post), which included a link DID change me. your shiny veneer isn’t quite what it once was. Now, you could assert that because it was a blog link, that there’s a context to it, and that’s true. Perhaps if you actually used twitter, I could comment more accurately.
But there are other folks, like @ThomScott or @sundaycosmetics, @retrobakery who I either barely know or don’t know at all that just happened to post a thoughtful tweet one day, intrigued me, and pulled me into their universe. That’s the grand design of twitter. How can you say that DOESN’T change your life? I purposely linked to these folks because chances are good most of my readers have never heard of them either. Heck, I just read my first post by @retrobakery this morning. But it was enough to engage me and change me.
And yes, you could say that I’m spouting off about the value of my medium (twitter), just as Seth is spouting off about his medium (books). The difference is I’m not slamming his – even incidentally. And I HAVE written books. Working on two new ones now.
Seth is correct that “you must create enough leverage to make things happen” But it’s erroneous to assume that everyone needs a counterweight the size of Mount Olympus to move the load. Some of us can get by with less than 140 characters.
It depends on your definition of “enough”, I suppose.