Where (Almost) Everybody Goes Wrong…

Whether you’re in the ‘Corporate Leaper’ stage of your Entrepreneurial journey (i.e. waiting to get the heck out of the J.O.B. and jump into The Wild with the rest of us), or you’re a veteran Business Owner, chances are high that you’ll fall prey to one of the classic errors that we all get sucked in by.

And this simple but often crippling business error typically surfaces in a couple of ways.

Allan Greenspan, the chair of the Fed in the USA in the 90s, called the first way this shows up “Irrational Exuberance”. Simply put, this was the human phenomenon of chasing headline figures (sales/revenue/turnover, depending on your preference).

We get SO bound up with ‘the sale’ and getting that cash in that, we forget to check (or even sense-check) whether we’re actually paying the client to work for them [more on this later]. The second way this manifests is a little more insidious and, therefore, harder to spot and keep in check. It’s the tendency to maximise before we systemise. In other words, we push for growth before we understand what works (and doesn’t).

The Ads effect

A really good way of testing whether you’ve fallen under the Exuberant Marketers’ Spell (the mantra of ‘marketing cures every business ill’) is to look at whether you feel – or even steadfastly believe – that advertising in any form is likely to build your business BEFORE you’ve proven your Core Offer and Proposition in the market (i.e. your target audience).

In the online space, this shows up most frequently as Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs (KTEs, my favourite type of micro business owner) and other flavours of entrepreneurs hopping on a FB Ads course, joining in a FB Ads ‘5 Day Challenge’, or trying to ‘scale’ their income.

So, why is this an issue?

Increasing income through advertising is a good thing, right? It would be if you followed the basics of Business, or what we call, simply, The Business Fundamentals. In the Success Engineers’ Multiverse, we express these through a signature methodology we call ‘The Voyage.’

The 4 Pillars of Business Success

Success in Business and, one could reasonably argue, in Life is down to TWO things:

1. The best allocation of all your Resources, which includes apparent things like Time, Money, Team (if you have one), Focus, etc., but also Joy, Energy, Care, and a whole raft of other ‘currencies’ we exchange for the thing we want. In this regard, recapturing and reallocating resources optimally, i.e. optimally doing the right thing at the right time, is something we all need to understand and focus on doing better.

2. The Mitigation of Risk. Now, be clear about this: You can never truly eliminate Risk. For every Upside, there is ALWAYS a Downside. The trick is to minimise the Downside whilst maximising the Upside, which leads us nicely back to what I said earlier, that a really good way to tell if you’re charging headlong into a problem in your Business is if/when you start focusing on Advertising before you’ve proven that what you’ve got actually works and has a healthy market demand for it, in the way that you communicate it.

In The Voyage, we express this through a process defined by these 4 Pillars:

1. Clarity (which is a ‘silent’ Pillar in our model, one we tap into before we ‘Get Underway’ with The Voyage)
2. Alignment
3. Control
4. Mastery

You can’t achieve Mastery without Clarity, and you can’t get Control of your income (and your business) if you don’t have most of your ducks in a row (Alignment). This means that these ‘Fundamentals’ build or stack on each other, with Step 3 only working properly if you’ve already negotiated Steps 1 and 2.

Except that’s not what the average ‘KTE’ (or, in fact, any entrepreneur) does. We want to short-circuit everything that we either don’t want to do or don’t understand how to do. And Advertising especially. Facebook Ads in the online and local small brick & mortar business spaces – are that ‘surefire’ indicator that a business owner is trying to speed up a process that may not be ready for it.

To avoid doubt, I’m not Marketer- or Ad-bashing here. Advertising is an AMPLIFIER, but if you don’t have a proven Offer and your Messaging isn’t landing beautifully (or at least functionally) with your target market, advertising will amplify what doesn’t work, leading to anything from money haemorrhaging from your bank account for no real benefit to a ripple effect through your business that can have you consumed with ‘Busyness’ for no gain in profit and good-fit clients.

The Antidote to Premature Advertising

Two friends of mine, both brilliant thinkers and business people in their own right, have variations of a message for the ‘shortcut crowd’ (read: almost every entrepreneur or ‘entrepreneur in waiting’, if you haven’t made the leap yet). “Take the Ultimate Shortcut: DO. THE. WORK.”

And my personal favourite for the specific situation we’re discussing here,
“The Process IS the Shortcut.”

So, if you really do want a shortcut, here’s a process to follow that will act as an antidote to, or preventative for, the urge to advertise prematurely.
(Remember: advertising is a critical piece of your business success puzzle, but only when the business is ready for it [right resources in the right way at the right time ])

Ready?

Here you go:

• Establish what Big Valuable Problem you solve / High-Demand Need you fulfil (problems and needs/wants are just two sides of the same coin)
• Identify the people/businesses that are within your reasonable reach that have the financial capacity and desire to extract at least a 2x-5x value from your service or product.
• Align your passion with the SOLVING of that problem for your target clients.
• TEST your solution, your Offer and your Messaging/Proposition (how you communicate the value and how easy you make it for prospective clients to buy).
• Do this often enough so that some ratios begin to appear:
  a) Leads/Enquiries: Conversations (a Sales Conversation can be interaction on your website, on the ‘phone, via Messenger/WhatsApp, or email – basically any interaction where the prospect wants to know more about what you offer. B) Conversations: Sales

There are more (many more) metrics that matter, but these are key to locking in some controls that ensure your advertising £$€s are protected and not squandered in some ‘hit & hope’ strategy. Above all, become aware of the drivers for your own behaviours and decision-making.

At Success Engineers, this is actually where we start – with who you are, not who you think you are. That way, you learn to build a plan for you, not some future vision of you or the guy or gal who sold you the ‘guaranteed blueprint’ of how to do X or Y (like FB Ads, build a business, become a coach, attract perfect clients ‘effortlessly’ or whatever other thing that worked for them, but has almost 0% chance of working for you).

This brings me nicely to…

Character-led Business™

This is the core of our entire philosophy at Success Engineers. Character is an outward expression of our Identity, of who we believe ourselves to be, and how we relate to the world around us, and it encompasses characteristics, or ‘traits’, like Courage, Tenacity, Composure, Consistency and Integrity.

I have a saying regarding the focus on Mindset (or ‘Mental Game’, as we call it), “Traits before States”. WHO you are determines HOW you act, not the ‘state’ you adopt. And long-term behaviours are a function of Character, not Mindset (which is your moment-to-moment thinking and decision-making).

Character is at the centre of everything humans do. If you want to learn about a person, observe their Character in action.

Character drives Outcomes

So, go back to how you view your business and what you’re doing to try to force or push for growth or even (if you aren’t doing that) how you’re focused on stabilising your income; take a look at what you’re trying to accomplish, and look through the lens of what we’ve explored and discussed in this article. Then, apply the simple mechanics of the 5 Steps I shared.

Hand on heart, can you say that you’ve diligently gone through this entire process and have your numbers/metrics/ratios dialled in? (BTW, if the answer’s ‘No’ to that, you’re in great company; it took me SEVEN years to sort this stuff out in my businesses).

It’s ALL about YOU!

At Success Engineers, our sole focus is to help you Build a Thriving Business around being Brilliant at what you do so that you can get closer to the things that Actually Matter Most to you. We do this together by showing you how to Grow, Build, and BE Better and supporting you through that growth as a business owner.

ALL change for the better starts with behavioural and personal transformation, and no one does that successfully on their own, not if they’re in business for the long game. Something that I hope you’ve already figured out if you’re a member of The Female CEO FB group and/or have been reading this magazine for any length of time is this…
No one wins alone. You, alone, are responsible for your success.
But you should never BE alone on your journey.

Choose your guides and companions carefully.

The clues will ALWAYS be in the quality of the information that is shared with you, the vibe & how it resonates with you, and in how much of a hurry the business, coach or individual is to have you take up an offer or fall in line with their way of doing or thinking about things. You must follow the Fundamentals, but your path is unique to you.

To your inevitable success.

Dino Tartaglia is a former Electronics Engineer, now a businessman, mentor, coach and troubleshooter working to help you, if you’re a coach, consultant, creative or service provider, to Build a Joyful, Dependable Business around Being Brilliant at What You Do. 

In his own coaching, and together with world-class coach Simon Hartley, the other half of Success Engineers (their joint business), he helps you to improve your thinking to ask better questions, so that you solve the right problems in your business at the right time, develop your own personal performance as a business owner and get closer to What Matters Most. 

You can find Dino in our FB Group , on his  website or on any of these other locations; Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram |PodCast - Back Bedroom to Big Business