joe polish

Prolific versus Perfect – 2

Excellence, Marketing, messaging, persistence

Excellence requires repetition.

Some call it the 10000 hour rule. Int is said that you need to do about 10000 hours of practice at learning something, before you become an expert. Its about ensuring persistence in your endevour.

This issue came up in a discussion today where the people supposedly are passionate about what they are doing but we are not getting the results. They had this argument that they were also getting frustrated when not getting results.

When we tried to analyse the challenges, one of the key challenge was the fact that we did not have enough feedback of how the customers react to our messaging. You have to test a lot of messaging till you are able to actually get to the right piece.

You can refine your messaging or sales pitch only when you interact with enough people, understand the inputs that the prospects give and what the competition is doing. Now if you are a prolific sales person and do 200 calls a days (just for example) and there’s another who’s doing 100 calls a day and both fail 90% of the time, with the first sale person after 20 days of calling you would have got a feedback of 3600 calls, and at the end of a year this would be close to 45000 interactions versus the other person’s 22000 failures.

Within one year the company whose sales people are prolific and are getting 45000 “no” would be way ahead of a company with sales people with just 22000 “no”. They would have refined their product pitch / messaging that many more times to come to near perfection within a year.

To the above argument I get a very standard response, and maybe you also would have it going on in your mind, that after some time statistically the changes would be minor. You are absolutely right about that. But the faster you reach that point, the more sales you pick up till the other company reaches that point.

If I can get my 10000 hours of practice in 3 years versus someone else who will take 5 years then the 2 years window that I have I can exploit to earn so much more , sell so much more or whatever I wish to. While the 10000 hour rule has been around for a long time now, the idea of speed in getting to the 10000 hours was something that I got from hearing Joe Polish in his Ilovemarketing.com podcasts.

The more prolific I am the more I can try new things, the more feedback I will get and the faster I can improve. Now if you have a coach along the way it becomes that much more quicker to climb the curve towards expertise. But you still have to do the hardwork. There’s no easy way out of it.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prolific versus perfect

confidence, persistence

I generally write at the end of my workday. Everyday before I start writing I have a question mark on what I would be able to write today. Everyday I think about what topic would of interest to my readers and where could I add value.Everyday I have this very strong inclination to not write.

But then I don’t want to break the momentum. As Joe Polish says it’s better to be prolific rather than perfect. If you practice something so often you will make lots of mistakes, but the faster you make mistakes, the more you will learn. The more you learn the higher is the chance that you will win eventually.

So my writing is not perfect. I write short notes so that while you are waiting in the line to pick up your coffee, you can read it. Over the years I hope my writing is becoming better.

One thing though is that based on this principle of being prolific rather than perfect, I can get into a flow state faster. Now once I start hitting the keys on my tablet or computer, my brain goes into a flow state and I start typing whatever ideas come into my mind. Being prolific is all about being persistent. As you persist, you also get the confidence to do even more.

Does that mean that I have become a “writer”. Absolutely not. I just pen my thoughts in a free flowing style. As a matter of fact a lot of authors may find my style absolutely rubbish. Can I eventually become a writer. Well maybe, who knows.

Can anyone following this model become a writer – maybe. But if they don’t start practicing writing, they anyway won’t become a writer.

Can this be used in other areas as well.

I know of sales and marketing for sure. Sales is a job which requires you to be hard skinned to face rejection and to qualify prospects better. If you get scared in calling out a prospect, from fear of rejection, you anyway won’t get sales to happen. I have learnt it the hard way. However if you call enough of the “right” prospects, you will eventually figure out ways to sell better. Add a mentor into the recipe and you can actually shorten the learning curve dramatically.

So this brings me to the end of the post for today. I hope your coffee is ready.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Keeping Commitments with yourself- Part 2

commitment, confidence, Habits, self esteem

Each time I read The Tiny Habits by B. J. Fogg, I  get more insight on how I can improve my self even further in termsof my habits.  I  keep reading a lot of books to see how I  can keep improving myself in various areas. Some of the insights that I gain, I also share with you.

If you see my earlier blogs, they were very erratic.  Sometimes every Sunday,  sometimes nothing for 6 months.

I reread The Tiny Habits about 6 months back and I also took a training in the Genius Experience with Joe Polish. That’s when I  took it upon myself to write a blog post every day.  These would be less than 3 minute reads, so you could read them while standing in the line for coffee.

When you keep thinking of writing something dramatic,  you enter a writer’s block, and you don’t write anything.

On the other hand if you know you can write even small posts, as long as you write, then over a period of time it will become a  habit and you will stop having a writer’s bl9ck

The other thing which helped me was a statement that Joe Polish made during one of the trainings – “it’s better to be prolific than perfect “

Once zi started doing this one day, then the next and so on, it became a habit for me to write about something everyday. By keeping the commitment to myself , to write a small post everyday, today I have reached a stage where I look forward to the time when I will write.

The happiness and increase in my self esteem due to this has been enormous.

When we increase our self esteem and therefore our self confidence eventually, we improve in all areas of our lives.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education- Part 2

Breathing, education, Health, Marketing, Yoga

Today I will give you examples of how different people / companies have used education to create a massive amount of marketing pull for their companies.

Example 1 : Joe Polish , Dean Jackson , Dan Sullivan. Between the three of them they run 4-5 podcasts. Ilovemarketing.com, morecheeselesswhiskers.com, 10Xtalk.com, Cloudlandia etc.

The amount of knowledge they give in these podcasts and related YouTube videos is so amazing. I have utilized so much of that knowledge and because I saw their knowledge working for me, I also started buying some of their products .

Example 2: Baba Ramdev is a Yoga and Ayurveda guru in India . Ayurveda is the more than 7000 year science of using plants and herbs to heal the body. Using Yoga and Ayurveda Ramdev baba teaches how you can live a healthy life.

Whenever possible I watch his videos on YouTube and television channels like IndiaTV. Through these I have learnt so many breathing exercises to keep me alert and healthy as well as about plants and herbs that can keep me healthy.

Patanjali is the company which sells Ayurveda products which is associated with Baba Ramdev and he does show some of those products in passing.

But what do you think comes to my mind first when I have to buy AloeVera juice. You got it Patanjali. Simply because the other companies didn’t teach me the advantages of using AloeVera first, I always prefer Patanjali . Like me there are millions of people who have today made Patanjali a company with revenues of more than USD 2 Billion.

Tomorrow I will pick up some more examples from different fields where education has helped increase the business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!