A Journey to the Soul of Your Business

For the small business owner marketing truly is the soul of the business.

I know, I know, a little heavy this week, but why own, operate, and slave over a business if it can't enhance every aspect of your life?

Look, this year over 1 million people in the USA alone will start businesses and in 10 years over 80% will have gone out of business. When asked, those in that 80% that failed will tell you that they just couldn't figure out marketing.

And really, it's no wonder if you think about how most businesses are started. Most businesses are started by people who know how to do something or who have acquired a skill and knowledge in a certain industry, but rarely if ever by someone who understands marketing.

The most important skill you can learn, steal, buy, possess or acquire is marketing. The problem is that most of what you need to do to understand how to effectively market your business comes from within you and not from within a book or a consultant.

Small business owners, who effectively grow their businesses and also have a life, do two things. At some point they determine what they want from their lives first and then they determine what the business has to do, be, and look like in order to deliver that. And then they set marketing goals that assure they will arrive where they need to.

The rest simply becomes a matter of keeping score and implementing marketing tactics and strategies (the kind that you can find in books and in this newsletter) that force you to meet your goals

For the small business owner, there is no separating your business from your life. The business is an integral part of who you are and instead of fighting for some mythical form of ideal balance you must work instead to tame the beast in a way that allows it to serve your ultimate plan in life.

If you can do that, and it is done through the type of marketing exercise I mentioned in this article, then you will find that owning a small business can bring more peace, happiness, and self-fulfillment than anything you will ever attempt to do.

Sounds like a nice journey doesn't it?

John Jantsch is the owner of Jantsch Communications a marketing consulting firm located in Kansas City, Mo. He is the creator of Duct Tape Marketing, a fully-customizable turn-key marketing system and the host of Duct Tape Marketing Unstuck, a small business radio program aired each Saturday on KCTE AM 1510.You can reach him at 816-561-3931 or john@jantschcommunications.com

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