Where Is My Instant Success?

Still looking for that back door?

It can get frustrating continually looking for the answers that will magically propel you to higher levels of success. We live in a world where the news is always filled with lottery winners and those stories of one in a million circumstances that worked. It’s one of the problems of news and TV in general. We see the fringe and it’s presented on a convenient, yet false platter. It can mess with our minds by deluding us into wishful thinking. Success can look like something simple. Do a couple things and you end up with riches, a hundred thousand fans and a perfect life.

You can end up looking for the back door to success, something that everyone else does not quite know about. The problem is that with information as proliferate as it is today, if there was such a back door, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? Back doors are not secrets for long.

Trying to attract and win business takes much iteration, perseverance and strategy. Here’s what the front door with long-term success looks like:

• Knowing your market. Your buyers are peculiar to your market. Their preferences, behaviors and motivations have to be continually studied. What works in one market will not necessarily work in another. If you come from the industry, it helps. You can use your intuition. If you are from the outside, it’s harder, but you can also bring innovation by looking at a problem in a new way.
• Growing your fans. Before people get married, they have to like each other first. What makes you likable and attractive? You have to continually grow your appeal and learn to connect. Your true fans will divide accordingly and like you. If you grow fans, you grow opportunities.
• Showing proof. If you have delivered a dozen times on something, then you have a little confidence. Deliver on a geometrically larger scale and you move into mastery. The world rewards the edges these days. You have to be special and prove it repeatedly. Then market it with conviction and creativity.

Slow success may be harder, but it is highly rewarding. It’s a game of momentum. As you build more assets and knowledge, the effort to get new business becomes easier.

We have looked long and hard for the shortcuts, but they don’t exist when it comes to marketing and growing your business. The lottery odds apply to a few types of ventures in the right place and time. The overwhelming majority get to win by working hard and making good, hard decisions continually over time.

What have you learned about your market after all of your time?