If It Works, Do More Of It, Don’t Stop

Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.

I am always amazed when I see a client, marketer, or entrepreneur stop doing what’s working. And, sometimes I even begin to twitch when they give me the reason they stopped.

I got a frantic call from an associate not too long ago. He was in trouble financially and wanted my help to pull him out. This call came from a guy I had known for about a year, and he hadn’t really gotten anywhere in his Information Marketing business in that time. He was still in the talking mode, and his bricks and mortar business wasn’t doing too well either.

He had a great concept and an idea that could have made him millions, but he wasn’t taking any action, but he wanted me to take some action for him, and all the risk.

I told him I wasn’t going to be able to do a deal with him, but would give him an hour of my time so we could plan and strategize how he might be able to make some quick money so he could save his house from foreclosure and begin to grow his information product business.

I had spent a couple of hours with this gentleman before going over some ideas and strategizing. I knew he had good ideas; he just wasn’t implementing and executing those ideas to turn them into money.

As we began to talk, he confided in me that his bricks and mortar business was also in trouble, so I asked him a few questions and discovered he had had success with a particular marketing program for his business but was no longer utilizing that campaign.

It was a pretty simple postcard campaign that was producing a 10 to 1 return for him. He had stopped sending the mail. When I inquired as to why he didn’t just reinstate the marketing program that was working for him, he told me he couldn’t come up with the money to mail them out.

The last time he mailed the postcard, he spent $2,000 and made $20,000, but he couldn’t come up with the money to go back to this same campaign. I suggested he didn’t have to spend $2,000 this time. If money was tight, maybe he should send $500 worth of mail or $200 and then based on his return, use half of the money he made to mail again, and to keep increasing the amount of mail he was sending until he got to the higher numbers again.

He said he couldn’t afford to do it. I suggested a family member or friend might loan him the money for the mailing. He just couldn’t see a way to make it work.

This just made no sense to me. He had a viable marketing program already in place with a successful return on investment, but he refused to simply reinstate it to get out of his financial situation.

I also put a plan together for him to start his Information Marketing business, and he never implemented one item on the plan.

He did however, send me an offer a few weeks later that if I would work with him for fee and make him $1,000,000 in the next 30 days, he would “give” me half of the money.

Needless to say, I turned the deal down.

The lessons here are important.

First, if you have a program in place, that is producing profits, then do more of it. Roll your marketing out, expand the campaign, as long as the numbers make sense and are working, do more of what’s working, not less. And, certainly don’t stop or abandon the program. Certainly if you have a program that is giving you a 10 to 1 return, something is working – do more of it or find a way to make those numbers better, but whatever you do, don’t stop doing what works (at least not until the numbers start to decrease).

Secondly, you have to take action. Thinking and planning are great, but they aren’t how implementation and execution get done. Moves forward, don’t sit still. If you aren’t doing something every day to grow yourself, and your business, you’re getting left behind.