So why am I talking about “practice how to preach”? The actual whole phrase is, practice what you preach, practice how to preach. And it’s a phrase I like.
First of all, practice what you preach. In this world of the internet, there are far too many sharks who are online, telling you —
- how to make money online
- how to run a business
- how you can do this
- how you can start a business
However they don’t seem to know too much detail, with exactly how they did it and what they did.
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And you are going to come back and say, if they make that much money, why on earth would they tell anyone else about it?
How much money are they going to make, telling everyone when it seems so easy for them to just do it themselves?
Generally you can spot them because they will tell you exactly how much money and how quickly, how much money they generated.
They don’t tell you how much profit they make, how much they generated.
Practice What You Preach
But so first of all, I am a big advocate of only telling people about things that you actually do. So people, we have had Marcus Sheridan on before, of the Sales line and Rivers Pools and Spas.
He has become a leading speaker in explaining how he does what he does. But he still works in his swimming pool company and he still does content marketing.
He still does exactly what he is talking about. So he can give you up to date information.
So I myself, I still run a number of fire safety ecommerce websites and I look at the data, doesn’t matter where I am in the world.
And although I have told you very clearly, I don’t work there day to day, I still love to look at the numbers at the end of the day.
I like to see how many we sold, I like to see patterns, I like to see developments and I like to see the results of tests that I know my staff are running in, marketing or production or new products.
So I’m up to date and if anything works for us, we’ll tell you about it. Now when it works for us, we are not reinventing the wheel, it’s nothing, no top secret stuff.
It’s not going to make any difference to me if I can explain to you some simple business tips.
To be honest, people ask me all the time to review websites and Facebook pages. I gladly do it and I tend to do it straight away, by the way.
I do it because I enjoy this, it is fun, but I will only ever explain it in a way that works for me. Now if it works for someone else that I know, and I know exactly how they do it, I may explain that too.
However unless I know the full details and I’ve seen genuine proof that it works, although if it doesn’t work, I will tell you if it doesn’t work. I need the proof. I’m not going to do it.
Practice How You Preach
So now, but the other part of this is the practice how you preach. It’s not just a case of, ‘hey do this, do that’.
People want to learn what you know. But there are ways of teaching and ways to help people learn and ways to make it easy.
Quite often when we start, we are not very good, because we are not trained teachers. I myself quite obviously, am not a trained teacher.
And in actual fact, one of the things that was clear to me was, when a friend who does have some knowledge of teaching, pointed out some basic things I was missing.
And I had not even realized, and it just had not occurred to me. Now I started a while ago, paying more attention to those that have a teaching background and the way they structure things.
So quite often if there’s a lesson involved, in the introduction, you need to explain to somebody what they are going to learn and why they’re going to learn.
And then once you’ve shown and explained with examples, at the end you need to summarize, what they have learned, how they can use it and what to expect next, or what to do next or call to action as it were. But this comes with practice.
The other one, you’ve probably seen people to speak on stage, at conferences or even at the front of the class and sometimes they are not very good, but some look great.
Some are brilliant. I can guarantee that those people that look great have been doing it for a while and still practice. They do not just walk on stage and wing it. That shows a disrespect for the people listening.
I recently spoke at a conference in Florida, the 10x E-Commerce Summit. And although I was talking about a subject I know over and over (I can talk to for hours without reading notes), I had to present it in a way that made sense to my audience.
In a way that kept their interest, in a way that gave more information at the end. It worked because a lot of people came up and told me it did so, so that was good, but it would have been so easy to just read some notes the night before, read some in the morning, go on stage and talk about it. That is not fair.
What I found is it is best to assume that your audience knows nothing. But sort of qualify your audience.
Tell them what you think, where you think they are at. Because some of them may be advanced but if you cater for just the ones that are very advanced, you will lose everyone else.
And generally the information that we know about our subject, that we think is very basic is not to others, this I’ve also learned, so my advice is please please please teach and preach.
Please help people to learn what you know. You are an expert but practice how you deliver it. Practice how you’ll explain and ask for feedback from people. Ask them —
- what do you think?
- is this working?
- does this help?
But then also, only teach and only preach on something you know inside out and are doing all the time. Because otherwise, it’s not fair, you’re not being genuine and you will get found out eventually. It won’t be pretty so, please do that.
Monday Book Recommendation
Today is book for the week. And today is, funnily enough, I read it recently and I know a lot of people who think this is one of their favorite books of all time and I don’t know how it has escaped me. It’s been on my waiting list, I’ve got a long waiting list for a long time.
It is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, it’s by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It’s a well-known book. In fact there’s been 22 immutable laws, back laws further things as well.
Very easy read. I was quite impressed that quite a few of them, we were doing. But it’s easy, it makes sense, it’s been around for a while. You’ll love it. It’s great.
Its good information relating to Donald Trump from back in the day when he was not successful, the last time when he was not successful, and it’s funny to see that in comparison to what’s come out recently from Donald Trump.
If you want to get that book, brand new from amazon or from their sister company Book Depository, sent for free, at my expense anywhere in the world, go to www.marketingforowners.com/freebook. You’ll find exactly how to get one. I’ll see you tomorrow.