I hear a lot of podcasts and business people are asked what their favorite quote is and what gets them motivated. My favorite quote is “Slow and steady wins the race.”
It is one of the most boring of all quotes, and I cringe when people ask me because it sounds so ordinary. But the reason I say that is because I’ve been around the business world since 1984, which is 31 years.
I am always thinking to myself, “I want it done now.” Same as all of us. I think a long time about an idea and I think about how it’s going to work and I think how I’m going to put it into action.
So I’ve done all that planning and then I start it and I want success now. I’m going to start it today. I want it finished this afternoon and I want success tomorrow. However, experience has taught me that it doesn’t actually happen like that.
All of the “quick fix, get started, be successful now” stuff may work today but it’s gone a couple of weeks later and then you need something else. But, if you go for long term strategies, things that are solid that are proven to work, that is going to last for the long term.
So, all of that investing and planning and time and learning and money etc, is worthwhile.
In the online marketing world, a lot of people would use black hat strategies and tricks and tweaks to optimize their sites for search engine optimization to get to the top in Google.
I never applied what you call “really black hat”, but I’ve been as guilty as anyone in my quests to get higher in Google.
But eventually, even though you may be making good money, Google will catch up with you and will kick you off because you’ve gone against their terms and conditions.
However, if you went for a long-term strategy that does it for real, you will gradually creep up to the top.
And, then, when you get to the top, you stay top. You have nothing to worry about, you’re not going to be kicked off.
I’m fortunate that I run my fire safety business, but you may be thinking, “Why should I listen to you, Jon?”
Well, we do a few million dollars a year selling our products and services and we built it from scratch not that long ago. Plus, I run my marketing company doing this.
I also spend half my time in England and the other half of my time in Vancouver, Canada. When I’m in England, where my Fire business is, I only go to the office twice a week, Tuesday mornings and Thursday morning.
And Thursday mornings, I don’t even get to the office. I actually have a meeting with David my finance guy in the pub over a bacon sandwich.
That is my Thursday contribution to work, but the company still manages to grow because it’s systemized and my staff know what to do.
So this is why hopefully, you listen to me because I’ve been there and done it and I know what works and what doesn’t.
When I go on Tuesdays I have a couple of meetings. We’ll discuss ongoing things and there are loads of projects so I have a list as long as your arm for what we’re doing.
Personally, I’d like them all done right now and the great thing is I can delegate these to my team for them to do.
But what I’ve realized over time is they’ve already got jobs, they weren’t waiting for a list of new things to do, they’ve got stuff to do.
When I give them something else, they’re thinking “Hang on, when am I going to fit that in? Maybe I’ll squeeze it in the two minutes I have to spare today.”
So I have to remember that they are not like not me as I’m the boss.
We owners often work all hours of the day and, if we need to fit it in, we’ll do it on a Sunday, we’ll do it at night, we’ll get up early, we’ll do it.
But your team or your staff they work normal business hours, unless you want to pay them more…and kill them in the process. So, you have to remember the limitations, the constraints.
So those projects are now cut down into 3 months bursts. It’s pointless thinking here we’ve got 30 things, we’ll do one a month, here’s a next 3 years of work, things will change.
So we look that our list of projects, we pick out 3 of them. We aim for one a month. If you’re wondering what’s a project, again…Sue asked me this on Tuesday and I defined that a project is…
Something new that we need to start and we can set a deadline for putting it into operation for going live.
So a project is something we’re not doing now, it’s something we’re going to do….it’s new or different and we can set a deadline for when it goes live.
So it will be ongoing so that’s what I define as a project that works. Some are major projects, some are mini, some might only take a day, but some may take a couple of months.
So if we aim for 3 of those in a quarter, in a 3-month time span, that’s one a month. If they all get done in the first month we might be on to start some more but we’re aiming for three.
And the thought is this that these will all be major. If we have 12 of these done a year, that’s going to have us solid improvement but before, I’d want 3 done a month or I’d want one done a week and they never finished because I was impatient so I learned to be patient that these things are done properly.
My staff doesn’t get stressed because they have stuff to do and then they can see in there that month how to fit this work in, they’re part of the project and we set a deadline, and it gets done.
This has worked for me over and over and over.
If you’re wondering this about my new course –“Why, Jon? You keep on telling me there’s a course coming, so why is it taking so long?” Because it has to be right, that means yeah, you see the upside of perfectionism, don’t you?
But it has to be right. It can’t be rough, we can’t forget anything it has to be right so that when it goes live, it is ready and no one complains. And that’s how it works. Slow and steady people, not speedy.
Sometimes, speedy does work but not on my experience. Anyway, see how it goes for you.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
It’s Tuesday, which means it is time for a toolbox tip. This one is for those of you that use Twitter. It is a service, and it’s free as in, I think, pretty much all the ones I tell you are.
It’s called Click to Tweet. If you go to the site, it explains what it does but quite simply it encourages people. If you’ve written something good, you want people to share it on Twitter say that others will see and think, “That’s interesting I’ll come and have a look at that.”
Now, in everything you write, every article, every page, there is probably a line or two that is quotable, that’s actually, “That’s handy, that’s interesting.”
Click here to instantly download our FREE Book
“The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
What you do is click to tweet you pick out that line, you go to the site, you paste it in they give you some code to put back on your website it’s very easy to do.
If you use WordPress, you can have a plugin that does this automatically and then in the article when someone’s reading it all they have to do is just use the click to tweet symbol and, it tweets it on their account, they share it, and it saves them a lot of effort.
It makes them look good because they’re impressing all their mates with their knowledge and what they read and what they know,and it gets you shown, gets you shared, gets you more audience, gets you more customers, gets you more sales, makes you more profit.
What more can I say? For more tools like this go to: marketingforowners.com/71. You’ll find that is all of the things we use everyday that makes those pounds and those dollars come rolling in the door without even having a bit of work.
Go on and have a look, it’s great report. I’ll catch you tomorrow.
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