Fame vs. Fortune

Transcription

Welcome to today’s solo episode.

I think there’s a problem in the internet marketing space these days. I think there’s a problem with business in general. I think there’s a problem with the way online marketing is done in 2018.

What is that problem?

Let’s dive into this. Let’s dive into the reality of where we are in this world, the state of business, and the state of building something online today. I believe this is something that we all must answer for ourselves: What’s more important, fame or fortune?

 

The confusion of fame and fortune; social media traps

I bring this up is because a lot of people confuse the two, and it’s challenging not to do so. When we look at things like Instagram, Facebook, or social media in general, we see the highlight reel of someone’s life. And if you’re constantly putting those inputs into your mind, we believe that is what we need to be doing at a subconscious level. We believe that somehow these people are internet famous.

The belief that we must do this is a very dangerous trap to fall into. And we’ve all fallen into it. I’ve fallen into it, and I’m sure you have, too. I don’t think anyone is immune from this, but it’s important to have some context and perspective to step back and look at what you’re doing in your business.

Ask, “Am I doing this to look cool? Or is it making me money and serving my clients?” I think we can marry the two.

I think having celebrity influence and authority helps with the success of your business, but I also want to let you know that you don’t necessarily have to become a celebrity to have a successful business. It’s the other way around.

I’m going to share personal anecdotes from my life. I’m not going to mention the specific people because I want to keep them anonymous for the sake of this conversation. But when you look at people on Instagram, the people you probably have on your feed, a lot of them I know personally, and a lot of them I don’t. I’m not going to pretend that I know everyone, but I do know people who have hundreds of thousands, or millions of followers on Instagram.

 

Fame doesn’t usually come before fortune

Let’s just talk about Instagram for a second.

What I’ve recognized is that the clear majority of them did not build their business using Instagram. They used Instagram at some point to leverage and accelerate what they were doing, but had already built their income through other means.

Maybe they were running webinars. Maybe they were running Facebook ads. Maybe they were speaking on stage. But it’s important to recognize that – and this is not always the case – there are people who have used Instagram to build their following and business, but I say it’s important for us to focus on building our income first then our influence.

If we get that reversed, and we focus on doing the things that are going to build influence, we lose sight of what’s important, and what’s important is being able to put food on your table, right? It’s being able to pay yourself, your team members, and live the life you want to live.

If we think that posting pictures on Instagram is going to help us do that, then we’re wrong quite often. Instagram can be used very strategically and at a benefit, but you must do it properly; as a secondary mechanism or activity in your business.

Now let’s broaden that by saying social media organically. I’m not talking about paid traffic here, just organic posting on social media like taking pictures in cool cars or on airplanes. If we think that people are going to look at that, and assume we’re successful and living the life they want to live by posting these types of pictures, maybe that’s true, maybe not.

But why do we feel we must do that?

Proper way to leverage social media vs. just wasting time

What I’m noticing now is that everyone is posting polished pictures on Instagram, and it’s getting to the point where it’s so scripted. It’s not even real and authentic anymore. It’s the highlight reel, and now Instagram stories have taken off in the last year and a half or so, because that’s more of the realness of the people that we’re following.

It’s not to say that we can’t post pictures of ourselves online, right? That’s not what I’m saying here. But I think it’s important to be aware of what we’re doing because, at the end of the day, if your business does not have a reliable system for generating clients and cash flow, then you’re toast, right?

 

Focus on what matters and have your machine running first

You must have a turnkey, predictable way for generating cash in your business and delivering an amazing result for your clients. If you don’t have that, and you think posting a little bit here and there is the way to do it, then that’s what I call spraying and praying marketing. You can have a little bit of spraying and praying in your business, if you want. You can create content.

I’ve got this podcast. We started a YouTube channel a couple months ago, which I’ll talk about in another podcast episode. We’re doing some things that are less predictable and more organic, but the only reason we’re doing that is because we have a machine, our Perfect Client Pipeline, that was built as the core of our business that drives everything we do for the most part.

I’d say 90% of our revenue comes from that.

It’s important to have that built out before going off on tangents, focusing on looking cool and successful, and posting all kinds of pictures. That’s all fine and good, but in my experience, a lot of people don’t love spending most of their time on social media. They feel like they have to because if they don’t, they’ll miss the boat.

This is something that I’ve struggled and had challenges with. I’m going to share in one of the upcoming solo rounds about some of the stuff we’re doing with social media because of these internal dialogues and discussions that we’ve had to move our business to the next level. But I’ll save that for one of the future episodes.

 

Being rich vs. looking rich and taking a proven path that’ll work

I want to leave you with this: Look at your business. Are you doing things to appear famous? Or are you doing things that move the needle forward? Do you want to be rich, or just look rich?

That’s a big distinction, and they don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. But you do have to make that conscious decision and be aware of what you’re doing. If what you’re doing is not producing the results you want, then you have to stop doing it, assuming you’ve been doing it for a while and it’s not giving you what you want.

Maybe it’s time to change directions, yet sometimes, if you’re not getting the results you want, sometimes you must stay the course. That’s one of those conundrums where yes, persistence and consistency are the key to success, but sometimes if it doesn’t work you must try something else.

Well, that’s a longer discussion. But at the end of the day, if you know you’re following a process that works, you should just tweak it. We give our clients with our Health Business Accelerator a process, our Perfect Client Pipeline. We help build it out and our whole goal is to help them 2X their ROI within four months or less of starting the workshop.  We tell them the process works. It has built our entire business from the ground up, and it’s helped a lot of our clients do the same.

We know this works every single time, but will it work for you?

The answer to that depends. It depends on if you are going to give up. It depends on if you are going to keep going when you don’t get the results you want right away.

It’s like cracking the combination of a safe. You’re trying to find the right combination, but what’s the number? What’s the second number? Sometimes we’re one or two numbers off, but if we keep dialing that in, we’ll hear that click and the vault will open. And when the vault opens, that is when miracles happen in your business. But we can’t get the vault open if we give up too soon.

Following the right path for you, then keep going. If you’re doing a bunch of stuff that you think is going to work but you’re not too sure, then get some guidance coaching to move you in the right direction so that you got more clarity and a proven game plan.

If this makes sense to you and you want to focus on building your fortune instead of your fame, or build your fame as a byproduct of all the cool stuff you’re doing for your clients, then we’d love to help you.

Here’s what I’d like you to do right now: If you haven’t done so already, book a call with us today. We’ll spend 45 minutes together, and we’ll get super-clear on where you are, where you want to go, and what’s holding you back from moving to that next level. I guarantee that this will be 45 extremely well-spent minutes focusing on your business, not in the trenches in your business.

If that’s an interest and you want our help, then we’d love to chat with you. All you have to do to book a call with us at healthpreneurgroup.com/book. On that page, you’ll see more information about the criteria that we look for, and if you meet that criteria we would love to chat with you.

That is all for today. I hope this episode finds you well. Again, if you have been enjoying the podcast, be sure to subscribe and leave a rating or review on iTunes. I hope you have an amazing one.

Again, focus on what matters, not what you think people care about, because that’s a very quick road to despair, discouragements, and an unfulfilled business. With that happy note, I hope that you fair well, and have an amazing day.