Back to School for Your Business
August 24th, 2016 // 12:40 pm @ Scott Manning
They say “school is never out for the pro” and I know you’ve heard that. The other week I talked about doing things when other aren’t, is what gets you ahead. Since it’s back to school around the country I thought I’d give you my short list of things you should continually be studying and doing in your business and life.
Reading Books – not just business books and certainly not just pleasure books, books of all kinds. These keep your mind refresh. I always say you can never learn enough on your own in just one lifetime to be successful, you need to leverage the knowledge and experience of other people. Read books.
Hone your skills on some specific part of your business. Anyone who is serious about their business continues to study by buying, reading, enrolling into courses and trainings at least a few times a year. They dedicate themselves to becoming exceptional or enhancing their own ability. This is a great practice that allows you to focus on and improve a key area of your life or business.
Study other marketers and other competitors. This is obvious, but are you doing it? Play prospect. Become customer. Look for best practices and apply them to your business.
Try new marketing strategies. I like for people to do this every single month, do at least one new or different thing to test in your business. You never know when you will come across something that trumps all others or is beneficial in some way.
Test new products, offers, price points. Same as the one above, more internal, the flip side to front end marketing. Your customers want to be surprised and excited about being your customer and you want to give them reasons to pay attention. Show up and be different in all ways and have more to offer.
Expand your marketing funnel and follow-up. It’s kind of like subjects in school, especially math, you learn one thing before the next. Well you have to have one part of your marketing funnel in place before the next part. Most people stop and it gets stale, or they just give up on their list and leads. Don’t. Add another step, or refer to above strategies, try something new, do an event or a promotion to cultivate your list.
Try new things, personally. Activities, hobbies, food, etc. Add a little spice to your life, as they say. Keep you on edge and you’ll perform better that way.
Find something that you’ve heard called a “stretch goal”, and I’d add to that, something that makes you go out of your comfort zone. Listen, if you are not getting nervous doing something to make new money in your business, you aren’t being bold enough or trying hard enough to be big and better.
Personally, you need to challenge yourself and feel challenged. Put a little pressure on yourself and see what happens. You’ll survive and you’ll progress a great deal more. It will spark momentum in your achievements, one thing leading to bigger things, when you push yourself the saying holds true, you’ll be surprised at what all you can do.
Okay, my favorite for the end…
Take a vacation. Oh yes, that’s part of back to school, actually it ought to be part of your quarterly plan. Recharging your mind and body by completely getting away from everything and everyone will free up space in you to see more clearly and move with more decisive action.
Oh, there is one more that ties all of these together…get out your calendar for the rest of the year and schedule all of these items. Organize, write them down, allocate when and what so you can make a plan to keep you on track. Schedule your success, and you’ll enjoy the rewards it’ll bring.
Category : Blog
