📄 The Return of Scuzzy McSalesface and His Amazing Exploding Audience
"Use this trick to explode your audience!". Thus read the subject header in my inbox. And I thought: what complete hogwash. (and yes: I unsubscribed) …
📄 “I’m terrible at marketing”. Martin calls BS
Found a message in my inbox this morning – someone asking for help, saying “I’m terrible at marketing”. I don’t buy that though. I consider …
📄 Acquiring resources vs being resourceful
Hey, It’s tempting to gather resources. Trainings, skills, education, adding powerful people to your network… videos, courses, workshops and retreats: There’s a ton of things …
📄 Always make sure you use the right ingredients, for the stage your business is in…
Let’s look at some business fundamentals, starting with the Three Stages and Ingredients of Business Growth. Each business goes through three distinct stages of growth, …
📄 Are you majoring in minor things?
Whatever it is you want to achieve, improving your knowledge and skills are a great way to make it happen faster and with more ease. …
📄 Every business is a publishing business
It’s said that every business is a publishing business, but that’s only half the story – it goes much further than that: Every individual is …
📄 How to use your Effective Hourly Rate as a razor to keep you focused on the most important activities
A concept I learned from James Schramko, your EHR is a simple yet powerful tool to help you decide which projects, tasks and activities deserve …
📄 Leading vs lagging – are you looking at the right metrics?
Everybody has dreams. Results we want to create. A lifestyle, and an economy, that we work towards. The results of those efforts show up in …
📄 Protect the Asset
What’s your default… crush it, hustle till you drop, and sleep is for suckers? You might not think that’s you, but are you really protecting …
📄 What purchase causes the kind of problems that you solve?
Of course it makes sense to only talk to buyers who are ready to take action, and buy your work – otherwise, you’re just spinning …
📄 What to do when “the face ain’t listening”
So you’re talking to someone whom you’d like to buy in to your idea – buyer, spouse, team mate, etc – and you realise: They’re …
📄 Why and how to avoid screwing things up with the wrong growth ingredients
There’s many great things you can create, given the right ingredients. Whether it’s food, or your business, or your social life… provided you put the …
📄 Why you should clean up the deadwood and get rid of deals
When everything seems stuck or miserable, one of the best things you can do is cull your list, clean up the deadwood, and get rid …
🧑🎓 Sales Qualified Leads
Daddy, what’s an SQL? A Sales Qualified Lead is someone who has been qualified as a good candidate for your offer, and who either has …
📄 If they say “I just don’t have the money”, ask them this question
One of the challenges that coaches and consultants face, is when money becomes the obstacle. “I just don’t have that kind of money” or "It’s …
📄 Hit launch, or pre-flight checklist?
Some things you can do on the fly, and others are best done with a recipe, system, or process. Take the humble checklist for instance, …
📄 Growing your business – the case for not fixing things
There’s three kinds of value a business can deliver: You either Fix, Prevent, or Improve things for a client. And, you can use this FPI …
📄 Fixing What Don’t Need Fixing
Let’s follow up on my article from last week, about trying to fix one thing, when fixing something else might be a better idea. Consider …
📄 A simple switch to get far more ROI from your pipeline work
What would you prefer: earn a dollar, or earn ten dimes? Sounds like it’s the same thing, but it isn’t. The common misconception in the …
📄 How to Build a Frankenstrategy
So you see someone online doing awesome with their business, using really interesting and effective tactics. Maybe they’re rocking Twitter, or Instagram, or webinars or …
📄 Business fundamentals, Pt 1. – doing things in the right order (Start with who)
Of course: you wouldn’t add the butter after the eggs are fried. We all know that things only work when you do them in the …
📄 Why Running a Business is Like Flying a Helicopter
When you look at other people’s business, it might look like others have it figured out, but I promise: almost nobody has. We see the …
📄 A simple trick for getting results with people when things are tense
When things are tense and when an issue needs resolving between people, it’s very easy to inadvertently ‘push the wrong buttons’, and make things worse. …
📄 When they object or resist… is it because you’re selling them an identity they don’t want?
It’s curious that the following Steve Jobs quote is one of the less mentioned ideas, in business and marketing: "People don’t buy products – they …
📄 The one problem shared by almost everyone who sells things
Over the years, working with hundreds of coaches and consultants, and conducting hundreds upon hundreds of interviews, there’s one fatal flaw that nearly every single …
📄 Why You Should Sell Plain Vanilla Instead of Innovation
If the kind of work you do is innovative, make sure you don’t let the novelty of it drive your buyer away. It happens very …
📄 How to stop the insidious loss of money that you probably never knew is happening
I’ll bet ready money that you’re multi-talented, skilled in many things, able to turn your hand to all sorts of stuff and fix it or …
📄 How to not be fooled by urgency, and focus on what’s important
It sounds so simple: "Do what’s important, forget the things that are urgent!" Almost sounds trite, as if life is clear-cut, and filled with straight …
📄 The why and how of ‘falling in love with the problem’
It’s very easy – and very tempting – to see a problem, and go "Right, I know how to fix that, let me at it". …
📄 Making Time for Our Most Important Roles
I often talk about ‘the suits we wear’, or: the different roles we play, depending on the context we’re in, or the task that’s at …
📄 Resistance is futile!
It’s all very nice and useful, to consider and rank the activities you could choose to engage in. But there’s a hidden saboteur you need …
📄 What you working on? (Zone of Genius)
🏋️ Trainings >> Effective Activity >> Pt. 1: Your Zone of Genius On any given day, what’s going on at work – what are you …
📄 The archetype to embody when you really want your business to thrive
It’s pretty odd that it gets talked about so little, but that concept of roles – of suits to wear, or identities to embody – …
📄 Are You Purchasing the Wrong Things
Each time we make a decision, we’re effectively looking to ‘purchase’ something. Either we want to add something to our lives – an outcome or …
📄 The Top Three Mistakes In Selling That You Should Avoid at All Cost
The first mistake is blindingly obvious: Too much talking, not enough listening. If you want a buyer to care about what you know, or do, …
📄 Business Fundamentals, Pt2 – Research before marketing
So you have this particular skill, or offer, you know it really works for people and it solves their problems, and you know there’s a …
📄 “Who is your Ideal Buyer?” I Asked. “Anyone With Money, He Said” 🤦
A couple of years ago, I was talking to an entrepreneur – and obviously, one of my first questions was: “Who is your ideal buyer?” …
📄 Everything Always Makes Sense In Your Buyer’s World
It’s often said that humans are incredibly irrational creatures, but it’s not that simple. People simply have an operating system that’s far more complex than …
📄 Beware of Business Cannibalism
It’s such a tricky trap, so easy to fall into: Doing the work that supports your business, while postponing the work that grows it. Your …
📄 Me, Make, Meet
One of the reasons we struggle to be productive is because we think time management is the solution. But, as David Kadavy tells us, it’s …
📄 Measure the self – The blindingly obvious, yet usually ignored relationship between measurement and results
Everyone is always going on about measurement and tracking and numbers and growth… But only the few, only the smart, measure what matters most: the …
📄 I Know What! Let’s Give Money to Our Competitors!
Of course, nobody would say that – nobody wants to give money to their competitors. Thing is though, practically every business out there does it. …
📄 Why You Shouldn’t Have Good Ideas
From the outside, it’s easy to see what would be good for other people. This one would benefit from more exercise. That one would feel …
📄 Learning as a Way to Procrastinate
Learning is never bad, but more often than not, it’s not helpful. Quite often, when we want to see different results in our lives, we …
📄 How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love ‘the Close’
What’s your biggest obstacle, where it comes to enrolling buyers in your work? The question often brings interesting answers: Some people say it’s finding buyers …
📄 Move fast, lose the sale
You might be really good at solving specific problems for your buyers and clients, but very often buyers don’t become clients, because we move too …
📄 Solutions rarely find problems, but problems often find solutions
You may have heard the adage: don’t be a solution looking for problems to solve. And it’s true – that approach makes for excruciatingly ineffective …
📄 How to make your lead generation much more fun and much much easier
The other day someone asked me whether I can help them generate more leads and opportunities. And while my happy place is coaching people on …
📄 A Lesson George Bernard Shaw Wants You to Learn
"The problem with communication is the Illusion that it has take place." – George Bernard Shaw (The quote is attributed to Shaw, but I couldn’t …
📄 Flagrant examples of why good ideas work against you
Over the last few years I’ve been going to a whole bunch of networking events and meetups – fun, helpful and very enlightening. But meeting …