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“Success doesn’t depend on how many resources you have. But how resourceful you can be.” - Tony Robbins.
Let me tell you a personal success story of mine today.
I am a young naive kid still in high school. Its the days of Napster (remember that music sharing software that rocked the internet?) And I have an idea for a website.A The idea is simple
Can we napsterize advertising?
1. Send an email to members with 12-15 ads in each email. Each member can receive a maximum of 5 emails per day.
2. For every email that a member reads, send her ad to 10 other people.
3. Let members refer their friends to this service. For every email a friend reads, send the referring member’s ad to 1 more person.
4. Have the referral network 3 levels deep.
For eg:
A Member A signs up and his ad is sent to 10 people for every email he reads.
A He promotes and gets Member B to signup under him. For every email member B reads, Member A’s ad is sent to 1 more person.
A Member B promotes and gets Member C to signup. For every email Member C reads, Member A and Member B’s ads are read by one more person.
A Member C promotes the service and Member D signs up. For every email Member D reads, Member A, B and C’s ads are read by one more person.
The idea seemed brilliant to me. But I’m a kid with no resources. And no credit card. And the idea would require at least $1,000 - $1,500 to bring to life!
I’ve designed a couple of websites before on freelance basis. Which would allow me to pay for my own hosting. But there was no way I could hire a programmer and pay him $1,500 to create the entire site for me!
So What Could I do?
What I did was tried learning programming on my own. That was a big disaster. I soon gave that up. But not before I’d wasted a couple of months. (Mini lesson: Play on your strengths. Outsource everything else.)
I could always borrow money from my parents. But I didn’t want to do that. (In the end, I did end up borrowing $10 from my Dad to pay for the domain name.)
Instead, here is what I did. I logged on to the ICQ chat network and started finding programmers over there. I asked a simple question to all of them:
“What would it take for you to create a site for me for free? What could I do in return?”
The first 7 or 8 programmers let me know that they didn’t work that way. But one project manager working for a big programming company in Ukraine made me an offer:
If I found 2 paying clients for him, he would assign a junior programmer to create my website for free!
I then spent the next few days contacting anyone and everyone I knew and asked them another simple question:
“Do you know someone who knows someone who needs programming work done?”
I did manage to find 2 paying clients for the Ukranian company. And they did keep their word and create the website for me.
And within the first month, that website became moderately successful. Attracting close to 540 members in its first 3 weeks.
Every time I’ve told this story to others, I’ve always been asked: why is MaxMailer.com no longer functional?
The answer is embarrassing: because I was young and stooopid.
I ran it for a few months. And the site was profitable from week 1 - as I had very little monetary investment in it. But then, I started having hosting problems. The site grew too big too fast. And my servers would go down every other day. At the same time, I moved to USA. So I gave up on it.
If I would have stuck with it, I could have sold it off for a lot of moolah!
Action Summary:
Think Barter. You can always borrow or barter for resources.
Ask for help.
Play on your strengths. Do what you are good with. Or else, you’ll just end up wasting time.
Just do it. Take action. Keep on moving.
Would you like to share one of your success stories with me?
I recently had an epiphany while reading a classic 20 year old business book.A Would you like to hear about it?
1.
One of my all time favourite stories is about how King Leonidas of Sparta fought against the mighty Persian army of a million men with just 300 soldiers.A (The story was recently made into the movie 300. )
King Leonidas uses the “bottleneck” strategy.
How can a 300 person army prevail against a million soldiers?A By making sure that no more than 300 of the million can fight with them at any one time.A The Spartan soldiers set their camp on the one side of a very narrow cliff.A The Persian army has to go through the narrow pathway to reach Sparta.A But because the pathway is narrow, they can’t all of them walk through it together.A The narrow cliff gives the Spartans a chance to fight on equal footing.
And because the Spartans are better skilled at using the sword, score after score of the Persians die while crossing the narrow cliff.A While very few of the Spartans perish.
2.
Lets take the flip side: what would you do if you were Persian to beat the Spartans?
You have to neutralize the bottleneck.
Or you can’t proceed forward. A A
The Persians finally find a secret goat path to outflank the Spartans and surround them.A And win the battle.A But with unimaginable heavy losses.
3.
The book that led to the epiphany is: The Goal by Eli Goldratt.A Its the book that introduced the “theory of constraints” (bottleneck) to the world.A It teaches us: Deal with the bottleneck or you can never grow.
The book mainly deals with bottlenecks in production and manufacturing facilities.A But I tried asking the question:
“What is the bottleneck in my blogging ventures?”
4.
The answer:
Me!
I am the biggest bottleneck.A Because I am - for the most part - the only writer and marketer for this blog, and my time is limited - the success of this blog depends on how much time I can give to it per week.
Just as the Persians can’t move forward without outflanking the bottleneck, this blog can’t grow without outflanking me!
To that effect, you’ll be seeing a few changes to this blog over the next few months.A So that:
1. This blog has momentum of its own.A It attracts its own traffic.
2. The content of this blog is not dependent on me alone.
Do you face the same situation with your blog?A What is your plan of action?A Lets start a conversation… (I’ll be sharing what I do for this blog and 14 of my other websites with you too.)
The year is 331 b.c. Alexander is still to become “Alexander the great.” Alexander has to fight a war against the king of Persia - Darius.
The war is very unbalanced and tilted in the favour of the Persian king Darius. Alexander’s army is outnumbered 20:1 in the battle against Darius. Furthermore, the Persian army is better equiped too. They have chariots and fancy weaponary.
Alexander realizes that it would be very hard to win against the Persian army. There is no way that Alexander could take on the might of Darius’ forces. So Alexander gives just one simple order to his soldiers:
KILL DARIUS.
Every soldier in Alexanders force has one clear mission, one clear target: Darius. They go after that one target in full force when the war beguns.
Their focus takes the Persian wing that protects Darius by surprise and Darius soon realizes what Alexander is upto. He flees to save his life. Seeing their commander and king run away, the other generals and soldiers flee too. And Alexander, with poor equipment and outnumbered soldiers, wins against the mighty Persians.
Alexander becomes “Alexander the great.”
Action summary:
You too can become great. Greatness lies within you. The best and the quickest way to become more successful is to focus on your one main problem. Focus on your “Darius.” When your main problem is solved, you will find that the other minor problems you had took care of themselves or are not a problem anymore!
“Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of one field of endeavor” - John Haggai.
Do you know why Michelin uses a baby in their tire ads?
Solomon Asch is a psychologist who pioneered the study of impression formation. He conducted an experiment where a bunch of people were divided in 2 groups. Both the groups were asked one question.
Group A is asked:
John is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious and intelligent. In general, how emotional do you think John is? (Circle your answer.)
Folks in group A marked John as a very emotional person. Most rated him as 7 or 8.
Folks in group B marked Mike as a not so emotional person. Most rated him as 3 or 4.
The Twist (if you haven’t found out already)
John and Mike - both were described using the same 6 characteristics! The only difference is that the order of the characteristics was reversed. The first characteristic for John is envious and the last one is intelligent. Where as the first characteristic for Mike is intelligent and the last is envious.
Because envious is an emotionally loaded characteristic, most people marked John as being emotional. And because intelligent is not emotionally loaded, most people marked Mike as not being emotional.
The first characteristic made all the difference!
The Power of the First Impression
Lead with your best foot forward. Because the first impression has a lasting effect on your readers.
People will make a snap decision about your blog in less than 4 seconds!
So you have to make a powerful first impression. Here are 7 elements that you should pay attention to improve the first impression your blog makes.
7 Blog Elements That Form First Impressions
1. Make sure your blog has a sharp colour combination.
2. Make sure you use good readable fonts.
3. Un-clutter your blog. Remove all the frivolous elements that don’t assist your blog readers.
4. Make sure the first screen of your blog looks fabulous. Work on your logo and header so that they match the emotion you want from your readers.
5. Spend more time on your headlines. Your headline will put the readers in the right frame of mind.
6. Use good looking images in your blog post. Because good images quickly create a positive mind frame.
7. Start your blog post with a bang. Don’t hide your main point in the middle of the post. Start with it.
I’ve heard it a 1001 times. All the entrepreneurial “start-a-business” books talk about it.
“Start your own business by identifying your passion in life.”
“You’ll only succeed if you are passionate about your business and its purpose.”
“Don’t start a business on a topic you are not passionate about, or you’ll never be happy. “
Recently, a reader commented:
“It is not hard to get new ideas or inspiration if you really have passion at your niche.”
My view? I think people have it upside down.
Passion shouldn’t be the cause of your
business or blog. It should be the effect.
Let me explain.
People don’t get passionate about a sport or a team and then start watching it. No. They first start watching the sport and then they get passionate about it.
I remember going to my first American football game in USA a few years back. (You may know that I’m not an American citizen from my profile. What you may not know is that I’ve lived quite a few years in America.) I didn’t go to watch the game because I was passionate about it. Heck - I didn’t even know all the rules of the game. But you should have seen me cheering and shouting in the stadium. I was as excited in the crowd as everyone else. Because I went to see the game, I got passionate.
Passion Stems From Commitment.
Ask any writer.
If a writer waited for passion and inspiration to come before she starts writing, she’ll never finish her book.
But once she sits down and commits herself to write, passion and inspiration comes on its own.
If you wait for passion to show up before you act, you’ll never move far. If you are committed enough to your blog, passion will come automatically.
Action Summary:
Make a decision today. Commit yourself. Decide how many hours per week you’ll spend on your blog. Ask a few close friends to help you keep focused. Keep on telling your blog readers what plans you have for your blog before you are ready with them. Commit before you can unleash. And the unleashing becomes easier.
I wake up today to the sound of drums playing loudly. A team of hooligans have entered my building complex. But not to cause any trouble. But instead to show a miracle and earn some money! Its Janmashtami - an Indian festival!
The army of Govindas are here because they see a pot tied to the 3rd floor of my building. Traditionally, the pot is supposed to have home made butter in it. But these days, its filled with coloured water. The army of Govindas quickly form a human pyramid to reach the pot. A small boy of 10 years old is at the top of the pyramid who breaks the pot!
Within 10 minutes its all over. But those 10 minutes are simply amazing. One single picture doesn’t do justice to it. You’ve got to see the formation of human pyramid to believe how well everything is organized.
Lessons Learned from the Human Pyramid
1. You’ve got to be drunk to do something so crazy!A Almost all of these Govindas are drunk.
2. Teamwork.A You can’t break the pot on your own.A You need a team.A And you need to trust that team to not drop you!
3. Foundation.A Taking care of the downside is the most important part. To make sure that no one gets hurt fatally, its important to create a strong foundation: in this case, a huge group of people to surround the pyramid to act as a cushion if some one falls down.
4. Practice.A The team of Govindas practice building the human pyramid for quite a few days before the actual event.A You can see them practicing in open areas 1-2-3 weeks before Janmashtami.
Creating Your Own Pyramid - Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
You can’t succeed on your own.A To reach your pot of gold - you need a group of mentors, advisors, friends to guide you.A To hold you.A To make sure that you don’t fall down too hard.
Instead of the “get-rich-quick” mentality, you’ve got to develop the “build-levels” mentality.A You can reach the pot of gold no matter how high it is, if you help enough people, and have enough people to help you in return.
Disclosure: Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared and didn’t have a camera at hand. So I’ve searched for a picture on flickr to post it on this blog. Picture Credit: Rohan Dumbre
Recently, an anonymous poster asks on my favourite forum:
“How can I start earning $7,500 a month”.
In response to that question, Jason Cain* made a quick 13 minute podcast. It’s simply superb advice! With Jason’s permission, you can listen to it here:
RSS subscribers: you won’t be able to listen to the podcast through your RSS feed. So click and visit the blog to listen to it.
Links:SOWPub forum (Jason’s as well as my favourite free forum online. This is the only forum I visit every time I’m online.)
Search for: CARVER matrix. (Or go read this article: How to Prioritize.)
Who Is Jason Cain?
Jason Cain is one of the old hands at blogging. He’s been making money with a blog since 1999! (Did we even have blogs then?) He’s a marketing genius in my books. And is most famous for running GoldBlogger - which unfortunately hasn’t been updated since ages now.
The reason GoldBlogger isn’t updated frequently is because Jason spends most of his time making money with blogs and websites instead of writing about it much. Now a days, he is busy creating an empire in the martial arts niche.
Jason is some one who has been there and done that. You’ll do well listening to his advice.
Disclosure: I’m not a big gambler.A I’ve never ever won more than $20 at a Casino. I’ve never lost a lot either. Except once.
I’m playing roulette in a casino in beautiful Goa. The roulette ball lands on Red 7 times in a row! The crowd goes a little crazy. People start betting wildly on Black! I’m one of those people.
The ball is rolled again. And again it lands on… Red!
The house wins a bucket load of money.
The people place their bets once again. All money on the Black. To recoup their money, some people double their previous bets!
And once again the ball lands on Red!
Deja vu… Once again bets are placed on Black. Once again people double their previous bets. And once again the ball lands on Red!
What are the odds?!
You should have heard the cry of anguish in the casino after the roulette ball landed on red 10 times in a row!
The ball landed on Black on its 11th ride on the roulette. But by that time, no one had any money left.A All the players had doubled their way to bankruptcy!
That day taught me an expensive lesson that smart professional gamblers and stock brokers know:
Cut Your Losses Early. Let Your Profits Roll.
Doesn’t matter what the probability says. Doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing. If you’re making a loss, you should cut it out quick. Because more important than the chance of making a huge killing is: taking care of your downside and making sure you can always play the game!
Conversation with a Website Gambler
I was recently reminded of this situation during a phone call. A person - lets call him Mark - calls me and asks me if I can help grow his website traffic. His website has all the bells and whistles. Mark had hired someone to create a website using all the latest buzzwords. Web 2.0. Ajax. Social networking. His site has it all.
What it didn’t have was a way of making money.
My response to Mark was: Traffic generation is easy. I could do that. But how was he going to convert the traffic and make money?
And his response: Oh once the website becomes popular, the money will somehow emerge automatically. Mark gave me an example: Google didn’t have a way of making money either when they first started out!
My suggestion was easy: Either find a way of monetizing the website. Or get out right now. Google had resources that you and me don’t have. They had venture capital funding to the tunes of millions. They could make million dollar losses yet stay in the game. But we can’t. We would go bankrupt if we follow the Google strategy.
Because Mark had invested a lot of his time and money already, he didn’t like my advice. And that is the problem: because most people invest a lot in their projects, they won’t get out of it even if they keep on making losses!
But you have to cut the ropes of an ugly project - or you’ll be dragged down along with it!
Action Summary:
Does your blog have a way of earning money? If not, then without wasting more time, sit down and start thinking of ways to monetize your blog.
Are your advertising sources profitable? If not, stop spending money and get out now. No amount of further effort will convert a poor advertising source profitable.
Is your employee a slacker? Let him go now. Don’t wait and pray for him to get better.
Is one of your clients taking a lot of your time - but you are holding on to him just because he could start sending a lot more business to you? Fire him!
Cut Your Losses Early! Because, chances are: you’ll lose your shirt before you can win the big promised paycheque.
Eons ago, there was a small town named Chelm somewhere in Europe. To bring order in the city, the people had elected an impartial judge. One day, filled with rage, the town cobbler killed one of his customers.
The cobbler was bought up in front of the judge who sentenced him to die by hanging. This was really bad news for the town. One townsman gained some courage to stand up and speak: “If Your Honor pleases, you have sentenced to death the town cobbler! He’s the only one we’ve got. If you hang him who will mend our shoes?”
a_?Who! Who?a_? cried all the other townsmen in Chelm together.
The judge thought for a while, nodded in agreement and reconsidered his verdict. a_?Good people of Chelm,a_? he said, a_?What you say is true. Since we have only one cobbler it would be a great wrong against the community to let him die. As there are two roofers in the town, let one of them be hanged instead!a_?
Action Summary:
You have to differentiate your blog from other blogs. If you fail to do that, the public will never let your blog become famous. They will never fight for you. And when the time comes to remove clutter from their blog reading lists, you will be the first one to go. So focus on differentiating your blog.
Painless Differentiation
It doesn’t take a lot to differentiate your blog from the crowd. A little effort can take you a long way. Dennis Rodman differentiated himself from other basketball players by making just one simple change.
For years, Dennis Rodman was a first class basketball player putting up impressive rebounding numbers on the scorecard. But he didn’t receive much publicity and hardly any endorsement contracts. That all changed when he coloured his hair red. By being bold and different, he instantly stood out from the rest of his mates. And made a fortune for himself endorsing products.
Dennis Rodman: Before & After. Black boring hair hid him in the pack. Red exciting hair made him rich and famous!
3 Ways of Differentiating Your Blog
In an effort to prevent this post turning into a book, I’ll keep the bullet points brief. You should focus on just 3 things to differentiate your blog.
1. Blog Design
Your blog design creates your first impression amongst your readers. So if you are really serious about blogging, you shouldn’t go for a ready made theme that 100s of other bloggers are using. But instead, create or hire some one to create your own blog theme.
Step 1: Audit your competitor’s blog. See how their blog theme looks like.
Step 2: Then create a blog theme that looks different than theirs. You can come up with a unique theme by simply focusing on three main elements of your blog:
Colours
Layout
Header/Logo
Eg: North X East blog on blogging has one of the best blog designs I’ve ever seen!
2. Content Chutzpah
Your blog content is divided in two parts. 1: Writing. 2: Supportive audio-visuals and images.
Differentiating your blog simply based on your writing is hard work. But you can do it by finding your own unique voice. Two tips to find your own voice is:
i. Exaggerate. You can only find your voice after you have experienced the extremes. Write a post with lots of adjectives. Write a post with lots of big words. Write a post with very unusual words in it. Try to write a poem. By experiencing these extremes, you will come to know what you are most comfortable with. And will create your own unique writing style. (Don’t publish your exaggerated posts if you don’t feel like it.)
ii. Read and emulate. I used to read the onion and then try to write an article in their style. I used to read Monday Morning Memo’s and immediately write my own blurb using their writing style. By emulating various masters, you’ll find your own voice.
It is very hard to differentiate your blog simply based on your writing. But you can easily make use of snazzy audio-visual and images to differentiate your blog.
Eg: Gaping Void differentiated himself because of his cartoon cards
Eg: Kathy Sierra differentiated her blog by making cool use of pictures and graphs
3. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Of Your Blog
What does your blog offer that no other blog offers?
Pizzas are made and sold since at least a few dozen decades. But Dominos could still sneak upon the market and take a huge pie out of it for themselves because they came up with a USP that no one else did. They offered something that no one else before them had offered: quick delivery.
How can you build up on your blog topic and offer something that no one else offers?
Eg: Chris Garrett has coined a new term “Authority Blogger” and created a USP for himself.
Make Your Blog Famous
In the comments section of this post, write down how you differentiate your blog. What do you do that makes you stand out? It could be based on the 3 differentiation points in the post above. Or it could be some other element that you focus on.
I’ll make a follow up post where I will feature your blog and how it differentiates itself!
