Rory Sutherlands wisdom... and believe you me the man is rather wise and adroit too.
Here are a few of my favourites.
1. Queuing for a nightclub is a good thing, queuing at the airport check-in is a terrible thing.
2. Pay the price of imperfection for the sake of clarity.
3. Our behaviour is not the product of our attitudes; our attitudes are a product of our behaviour.
4. Bright-line rules have their place in society, especially concerning tax evasion.
5. All human choice is path dependent
6. Everyone should read Nate Silver’s book ‘The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don’t’.
7. TripAdvisor is an example of a "reputational feedback" loop, where the consumer can only benefit as service gets better.
8. As the banking system has proven, you can’t trust people who can’t get hurt. We need a means of retaliation to develop any sort of trust.
9. Changing one little thing can have a hugely disproportionately effect, such as the $300 million button from a large e-tailer.
10. The SCARF model, as shown below, is a summary of important discoveries from neuroscience about the way people interact socially. The internet has the potential to tell us a great deal more about human behavior.
It stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness.
This SCARF concept being very very relevant to the course on "gamifaction" and psychology I am doing. so a RESULT. Nothing to do with greatmarketing - or isn't it ;)
Friday, 3 May 2013
Monday, 29 April 2013
Manchester must look to the east.
Many moons ago I came to Manchester, home of both red and blue teams, home of innovation, industry and the industrial revolution, home of the very first computer, and home or maybe the birth place to many many globally important cultural cultures, I came here because I believed that Manchester could be the start of something once again.
Some ten years on.... I am I so sure?
Well, Chancellor George Osborne has called on Manchester to lead the UK in what he has termed the "second industrial revolution". A term I am sure someone has used before... but anyway.
Speaking at the launch of the Manchester-China Forum on Friday (26 April 2013), he said the city had a real opportunity to "do something strategic for our economy for decades to come" as it seeks to build closer links with the Far East.
"I am absolutely passionate about trying to improve and increase the economic links between our country and China," he said.
"Manchester was the first industrial city in the world; it led an economic revolution that transformed our entire planet.
"We are now in the midst of a second industrial revolution; a shift in economic power to the East and South, and I want Manchester to lead, for our country. "The British government will be 100 per cent behind this."
Now for whatever reasons I am not always 100% behind what the government says - but this is something I can very much get behind.
As myself I went to study the South East Asian region last year for several months last year. And I have also been to Hong Kong and China with the UKti.
So the new Manchester-China Forum is an interesting proposal for me to be potentially involved in - as it is a business-led initiative aimed at increasing Greater Manchester's commercial connectivity, including trade and investment with China.
It follows a report by Lord Nat Wei in 2012 which identified China as a strategic priority for the city.
Lord Wei said at the event: "This country needs growth and cities have traditionally been the major way in which we grow.
"While Germany has made a living over the past 30 years by providing tools for China's manufacturing development, so we can now help to unlock the country's services and consumption sector, city by city.
"This forum recognises Manchester as the original industrial city which can be a source of growth in an advanced manufacturing age."
Lord Wei cited examples of the forum model in the US, which had helped cities to establish links in China over the past 20 years.
"If the city thrives and trades with China then businesses will thrive as well," he added.
The Manchester-China Forum is being chaired by Charlie Cornish, chief executive at Manchester Airports Group, and includes a raft of private and public sector partners across the city region.
It sounds like something everyone from Manchester should be involved in whether you are part of the digital mobile creative scene (what I like to call the advanced manufacturing sector) or part of the new Graphene and what everyone else calls the advanced manufacturing sector ;)
Either way - perhaps sticking around Manchester is no bad thing for a few more years yet.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
I gotta stop doing this - I Gotta Stop Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle
A couple of points so wise from Mark Sustner that I pop them here to remember them. So I will TAKE ACTION at my new start up company.
Today I get my developers to launch the game - hopefully with my client at Justaxi - on my final day - NO matter what..............
I also went to the Lean Start Up Manchester event last night - which inspired me. This is a great blog from Mark as well.
"I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying derived from Voltaire - “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base.
Or to borrow a simple life lesson from Gretchen Rubin,
“The 20-minute walk I take is better than the 3-mile run I never start. Having people over for take-out is better than never having people to an elegant dinner party.”
I think about this topic of perfection being the enemy of the good often. Because I live in startup land where everybody is a perfectionist. I think this is particularly true because every startup entrepreneur is trying to catch lightning in a bottle.
I hear about it in every first product release. You can see it in the founders’ eyes. They want the perfect feature set, the PR company lined up to do the perfect press release, they want maximum coverage, rave reviews, viral adoption and they want to sit back and then wait for the signups to come roaring in.
Life doesn’t work like that. And gearing yourself up for a lighting-in-a-bottle moment leads to bad company decisions.
Even in the age of MVP worship I see founders who want to bundle too many features into a release because they’re worried that customers will be unhappy if they don’t.
I see teams holding back on product releases even when the product is complete because they’re nervous it’s not yet good enough to get positive journalist reviews.
They hold back on announcing their funding because they want to be sure they have 3 other important announcements to bundle – I often counsel against this.
Stop trying to catch lighting in a bottle.
Your announcement will lead to more traffic than you’ve had in the past. But it’s highly unlikely to have that aha moment that Apple gets when it announces new products.
The much more likely result is that you get some positive feedback from the community, you get some strong users who like your product, you get some people telling you your product isn’t as good as the competitors or isn’t as good as your marketing hype.
That’s ok.
Launch and learn.
JFDI.
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
So the sooner you’re live the sooner you’ll be able to separate your own internal BS from what the market really wants and thinks.
The other reason I counsel so much on this topic is confidence.
You gear your team up for your TC Disrupt presentation, your interview with Kara Swisher, your graduation day from YC and waiting for the product success.
And when it doesn’t come in droves it feels like defeat. And the whole company feels it because you set expectations too high.
The golden rule of management is to set low expectations and beat them. Lightning in a bottle breaks the cardinal rule.
So be prepared for the marathon. Expects a long, slow linear climb.
After all – some people win the lottery. And that’s who you read about in the papers. And it feels nice to think that $285 million is just one Lotto ticket away.
But you’re a pragmatist. And you know that your success will come from the hard work and refinement of 20 different product releases each that incrementally made you the great company that you are.
And by being in the game long enough – if you’re lucky, smart & tenacious – you might just see that traffic & revenue arc up.
p.s. no – I’m not talking about your specific company. I know I gave you this advice so you think I’m picking on you. I give this advice to every young startup. Promise."
Do you know how old Meetup is? It's another overnight success isnt it? Hmmm.... quite a few nights ;)
This morning - I woke at 500am - all excited about gamifaction and how this concept, along with my usual toolkit of cutting edge digital marketing could and will help this particular client. But then I realized something - not only had I woke up my wife by not turning down the ipad backlight (school boy error) but also that I had been doing this for around a decade. If not more...
This waking up excited by new marketing projects with new ideas for clients for 10 years.
Doing greatmarketing talks and trainings for organizations and companies for at least 7 years.
Working in marketing and events promotion before that for Spearfish for at least another 3.
And in guerrilla marketing for eco fashion label THTC before that for more years than I care to remember.
The point is that - success - doesn't seem to come over night.
So I read with interest something from Fred Wilson, who is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures.
Who invested in Meetup. That great idea which I thought was new. As an app and all that.
But do you know how old meetup is? As Fred writes:
"Meetup is in its second decade as a company and growing rapidly. Last night Meetup booked its hundred millionth RSVP. You can see the counter at the top of this page. That is one hundred million people who used the Internet to get off the Internet and go out and meet other people and talk about things they are passionate about. Now I realize that some of these hundred million people are the same people doing this again and again. But even so, a hundred million RSVPs is a big deal for a company that has been plugging away on this mission for more than a decade.
When you are at something for a decade or more, it can become a slog. It requires tenacity and persistence to keep pushing and innovating. In the past year Meetup has started growing faster than it has in quite a while. The chart below shows that:
Scott and his team are as passionate about the Meetup mission as they were when they started the company. They have a very long timeframe in their minds and they are executing against it. And they are winning with tenacity and persistence. Which is why we backed Meetup in the first place."
I love that - an investor with a vision more than 10 years ahead of its time. Now that's what I need :)
Or is it - should I stop this path of helping companies succeed and succeed myself? For this I might well need a little "seed" capital. Pun horribly intended.
This waking up excited by new marketing projects with new ideas for clients for 10 years.
Doing greatmarketing talks and trainings for organizations and companies for at least 7 years.
Working in marketing and events promotion before that for Spearfish for at least another 3.
And in guerrilla marketing for eco fashion label THTC before that for more years than I care to remember.
The point is that - success - doesn't seem to come over night.
So I read with interest something from Fred Wilson, who is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures.
Who invested in Meetup. That great idea which I thought was new. As an app and all that.
But do you know how old meetup is? As Fred writes:
"Meetup is in its second decade as a company and growing rapidly. Last night Meetup booked its hundred millionth RSVP. You can see the counter at the top of this page. That is one hundred million people who used the Internet to get off the Internet and go out and meet other people and talk about things they are passionate about. Now I realize that some of these hundred million people are the same people doing this again and again. But even so, a hundred million RSVPs is a big deal for a company that has been plugging away on this mission for more than a decade.
When you are at something for a decade or more, it can become a slog. It requires tenacity and persistence to keep pushing and innovating. In the past year Meetup has started growing faster than it has in quite a while. The chart below shows that:
Scott and his team are as passionate about the Meetup mission as they were when they started the company. They have a very long timeframe in their minds and they are executing against it. And they are winning with tenacity and persistence. Which is why we backed Meetup in the first place."
I love that - an investor with a vision more than 10 years ahead of its time. Now that's what I need :)
Or is it - should I stop this path of helping companies succeed and succeed myself? For this I might well need a little "seed" capital. Pun horribly intended.
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Defeat Distraction: Refocusing with Purpose By Leo Babauta: Some great tips...
So relevant for me today - that I had to blog it down. This afternoon will be a very different few hours of working.
Here’s a scenario: you jump into email or [insert preferred social network here] and start doing a few tasks, reading a few things, taking care of business … but soon get lost in the swarm of distractions of little things, and two hours have gone by without getting anything important or meaningful done.
Ever happened to you?
Sometimes a big task will sit there on your todo list or email inbox, but you keep putting it off because you’re in the quick-task mode. It’s hard to do slower, more thoughtful tasks when you’re in quick-task mode.
This happens to me all the time. I will breeze through 10-15 emails because they require 1-2 sentence replies or a 2-minute task each, which means I can knock them off. But a larger task sits there in my inbox, waiting for action, and can sit there for an entire day or two.
Why? Because it requires a different mode of thinking.
And so we put it off, and let the distractions of the Internet carry us away instead.
What’s a better method? Refocus yourself. Change modes. Have a purpose for each thing you set out to do. This works for me every time.
Here’s how:
Catch yourself getting lost.
When you see yourself putting off a bigger email or task, and getting lost in little tasks or distractions, notice this. Watch yourself. Then pause.
Pull back.
Take just 10-20 seconds to stop what you’re doing, and take a step back. Look at the bigger picture of what you’re doing. What’s the most important thing you could be doing right now? A bunch of little tasks? Or is there something with more meaning on your list?
Change your mode of thinking.
When you’re in quick-task mode, you’re not going to be able to handle something that requires more focus and thought. Writing a longer piece is impossible when your brain is in quick-task mode. So, as you’re paused, refocus and change your mode. Prepare yourself for something with less switching and more staying.
Know your intention.
Taking a few seconds to remind yourself of your intention as you start a task is a good idea. If you’re going to write something, what’s the purpose of the writing? Who is it helping? How is it changing the world?
Taking just a few moments to see the bigger picture, change your mode of thinking, and set your intention for your new task is an important investment. It’s an easy thing to do, but it can change your work completely.
Here’s a scenario: you jump into email or [insert preferred social network here] and start doing a few tasks, reading a few things, taking care of business … but soon get lost in the swarm of distractions of little things, and two hours have gone by without getting anything important or meaningful done.
Ever happened to you?
Sometimes a big task will sit there on your todo list or email inbox, but you keep putting it off because you’re in the quick-task mode. It’s hard to do slower, more thoughtful tasks when you’re in quick-task mode.
This happens to me all the time. I will breeze through 10-15 emails because they require 1-2 sentence replies or a 2-minute task each, which means I can knock them off. But a larger task sits there in my inbox, waiting for action, and can sit there for an entire day or two.
Why? Because it requires a different mode of thinking.
And so we put it off, and let the distractions of the Internet carry us away instead.
What’s a better method? Refocus yourself. Change modes. Have a purpose for each thing you set out to do. This works for me every time.
Here’s how:
Catch yourself getting lost.
When you see yourself putting off a bigger email or task, and getting lost in little tasks or distractions, notice this. Watch yourself. Then pause.
Pull back.
Take just 10-20 seconds to stop what you’re doing, and take a step back. Look at the bigger picture of what you’re doing. What’s the most important thing you could be doing right now? A bunch of little tasks? Or is there something with more meaning on your list?
Change your mode of thinking.
When you’re in quick-task mode, you’re not going to be able to handle something that requires more focus and thought. Writing a longer piece is impossible when your brain is in quick-task mode. So, as you’re paused, refocus and change your mode. Prepare yourself for something with less switching and more staying.
Know your intention.
Taking a few seconds to remind yourself of your intention as you start a task is a good idea. If you’re going to write something, what’s the purpose of the writing? Who is it helping? How is it changing the world?
Taking just a few moments to see the bigger picture, change your mode of thinking, and set your intention for your new task is an important investment. It’s an easy thing to do, but it can change your work completely.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
How good content helps the sales team sell - especially when you have long sales cycles i.e. in B2B :)
An excellent blog about the long sales cycle by Darren Bond, Head of Strategy at Coast Digital, in this he explains the role of content at different stages in the sales cycle
Only five per cent of leads that come into a business are ready to make a buying decision right now – sound familiar?
In my role I get to speak to a lot of marketers, from a lot of different businesses and I hear this (or something similar) a lot. When I ask what the number one challenge is in terms of marketing to a pipeline, it’s content. Not because they can’t get enough content resource from the business to do any marketing at all (most marketing teams have access to someone who can write copy), but because they don’t really know how to plan content, or put it to effective use online. Here are some useful tips to get your content planning started.
Map your pipeline
What you’re trying to do is work out the process a typical lead would go through when engaging with your business. Align your marketing and sales teams to make sure you can take a lead from one end (prospect) to the other (paying customer) without changing the experience they’ve received. From a recent survey of B2B buyers, 53 per cent said buying experience was the main driver for decision-making, not brand, not the service offering, not even (believe it or not) the price! Making sure the experience is smooth and consistent is vital to success. Look at your pipeline and consider what kind of content a user at each stage is likely to be interested in.
Early
The prospect knows they have a challenge and is researching potential solutions. At this stage, they’re likely to be interested in informational content.
Middle
The prospect knows their challenge well enough to start creating a business case to solve it. At this stage they’ll be looking for buyer’s guides, and be more open to products and brands – ready to become a lead.
Late
Now the prospect has got budget approval and is looking for a brand, solution or product that can meet their need – essentially they have a quotable opportunity. When it comes to planning, you need to think about what content can be produced to support each aspect of this decision-making process.
Work out who your prospects are and what information they’re looking for. The easy way to do this is to take a sample, and give them a call. Ask them about the challenge they’re trying to solve. This will give you a great starting point for what content to produce.
For a more quantitative view, if you’ve got email data, use a drip campaign (send automated emails) to test different subject matters. Send email messages focused on a single service offering or product. If the user opens and clicks, they’re interested. If not, send them the next email about a different service. Repeat this process. If you’ve got lots of data, this will help you quickly segment it into silos of interest.
Plan your content creation
You know what the decision-making process looks like. You also know who your prospects are, and their potential challenges. So when it comes to planning, think of it like this: you’re aiming to give the right person, the right content, at the right time in the buying process.
From a text content perspective, you need to consider where you’re going to get your content from, especially in technical industries. Often there’s lots of great product and solution-based knowledge in a business, but getting it out of people can be like getting blood from the proverbial stone. Remember these guys all have full time jobs and marketing isn’t in their remit. A 10 minute chat can often give you more than enough information to deliver high quality web content.
It’s easy to think about content in the form of words, but don’t limit yourself to that. Think whitepapers, guides and blogs, sure, but think outside that too. Think video, webinars, social media. All of these are great ways to deliver content to your target audience.
Delivering to your pipeline
The important thing to note is that at this stage it’s not just a hit and hope content delivery. By now you know who’s receiving it, what their challenge is and what content you have got to address said challenge.
You can monitor the response to this content, learn more and start mapping prospects to parts of the pipeline.
If someone responds to an education piece, you can assume they’re early in the buying cycle, so you can try calls to action to introduce them to a potential solution. If they don’t respond, they probably aren’t ready to take the next step through the pipeline. What more value can you add with content? Do they need more informational/educational content?
If they’re receptive to solution-based content (and therefore in the middle of pipeline) will they respond to a specific product-based message? If so, they’re taking the step into the last section of the pipeline, and should be passed to sales.
It’s simple to apply a ‘snakes and ladders’ analogy to describe the nurturing process. You’re looking to get someone to the end of the board as effectively as possible. Delivering the right content at the right time will help push the prospect one square along, but what you really want is for the prospect to hit a ladder (ie accelerating them through the pipeline), so you offer them messaging to encourage them into the next stage of the pipeline. If they don’t respond, consider it a snake, and put them back where they were. If they’ve engaged with educational content, promote your solution-based content to them. If they’ve engaged with solution-based content already, try a harder product or brand-based message.
This can feel like a hefty process, and it can be, so it’s worth starting small. Break these steps down and prove the value along the way. Take the simplest aspect of your business, and test it. If you get it right the results will speak for themselves. If it doesn’t work out first time, don’t quit. Let’s not forget the advice from the nineteenth century German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.
I think that’s the first time I’ve referred to prospects as ‘the enemy’ but the point stands true. Don’t get too attached to your plan. You need to be pragmatic, developing your plan to maintain effectiveness. If you can get in the cycle of delivering content against an ever-changing plan then you’re on to a winner!
Only five per cent of leads that come into a business are ready to make a buying decision right now – sound familiar?
In my role I get to speak to a lot of marketers, from a lot of different businesses and I hear this (or something similar) a lot. When I ask what the number one challenge is in terms of marketing to a pipeline, it’s content. Not because they can’t get enough content resource from the business to do any marketing at all (most marketing teams have access to someone who can write copy), but because they don’t really know how to plan content, or put it to effective use online. Here are some useful tips to get your content planning started.
Map your pipeline
What you’re trying to do is work out the process a typical lead would go through when engaging with your business. Align your marketing and sales teams to make sure you can take a lead from one end (prospect) to the other (paying customer) without changing the experience they’ve received. From a recent survey of B2B buyers, 53 per cent said buying experience was the main driver for decision-making, not brand, not the service offering, not even (believe it or not) the price! Making sure the experience is smooth and consistent is vital to success. Look at your pipeline and consider what kind of content a user at each stage is likely to be interested in.
Early
The prospect knows they have a challenge and is researching potential solutions. At this stage, they’re likely to be interested in informational content.
Middle
The prospect knows their challenge well enough to start creating a business case to solve it. At this stage they’ll be looking for buyer’s guides, and be more open to products and brands – ready to become a lead.
Late
Now the prospect has got budget approval and is looking for a brand, solution or product that can meet their need – essentially they have a quotable opportunity. When it comes to planning, you need to think about what content can be produced to support each aspect of this decision-making process.
Work out who your prospects are and what information they’re looking for. The easy way to do this is to take a sample, and give them a call. Ask them about the challenge they’re trying to solve. This will give you a great starting point for what content to produce.
For a more quantitative view, if you’ve got email data, use a drip campaign (send automated emails) to test different subject matters. Send email messages focused on a single service offering or product. If the user opens and clicks, they’re interested. If not, send them the next email about a different service. Repeat this process. If you’ve got lots of data, this will help you quickly segment it into silos of interest.
Plan your content creation
You know what the decision-making process looks like. You also know who your prospects are, and their potential challenges. So when it comes to planning, think of it like this: you’re aiming to give the right person, the right content, at the right time in the buying process.
From a text content perspective, you need to consider where you’re going to get your content from, especially in technical industries. Often there’s lots of great product and solution-based knowledge in a business, but getting it out of people can be like getting blood from the proverbial stone. Remember these guys all have full time jobs and marketing isn’t in their remit. A 10 minute chat can often give you more than enough information to deliver high quality web content.
It’s easy to think about content in the form of words, but don’t limit yourself to that. Think whitepapers, guides and blogs, sure, but think outside that too. Think video, webinars, social media. All of these are great ways to deliver content to your target audience.
Delivering to your pipeline
The important thing to note is that at this stage it’s not just a hit and hope content delivery. By now you know who’s receiving it, what their challenge is and what content you have got to address said challenge.
You can monitor the response to this content, learn more and start mapping prospects to parts of the pipeline.
If someone responds to an education piece, you can assume they’re early in the buying cycle, so you can try calls to action to introduce them to a potential solution. If they don’t respond, they probably aren’t ready to take the next step through the pipeline. What more value can you add with content? Do they need more informational/educational content?
If they’re receptive to solution-based content (and therefore in the middle of pipeline) will they respond to a specific product-based message? If so, they’re taking the step into the last section of the pipeline, and should be passed to sales.
It’s simple to apply a ‘snakes and ladders’ analogy to describe the nurturing process. You’re looking to get someone to the end of the board as effectively as possible. Delivering the right content at the right time will help push the prospect one square along, but what you really want is for the prospect to hit a ladder (ie accelerating them through the pipeline), so you offer them messaging to encourage them into the next stage of the pipeline. If they don’t respond, consider it a snake, and put them back where they were. If they’ve engaged with educational content, promote your solution-based content to them. If they’ve engaged with solution-based content already, try a harder product or brand-based message.
This can feel like a hefty process, and it can be, so it’s worth starting small. Break these steps down and prove the value along the way. Take the simplest aspect of your business, and test it. If you get it right the results will speak for themselves. If it doesn’t work out first time, don’t quit. Let’s not forget the advice from the nineteenth century German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.
I think that’s the first time I’ve referred to prospects as ‘the enemy’ but the point stands true. Don’t get too attached to your plan. You need to be pragmatic, developing your plan to maintain effectiveness. If you can get in the cycle of delivering content against an ever-changing plan then you’re on to a winner!
Sunday, 14 April 2013
The Zen of Habit Forming – Take Control of Your Life and Business Forever
This blog post is not written by me - but the rather wonderfully titled - Laptop Zentrepreneur (Andrew Spence)
I liked it - apart from the first quote - where I would think it is "your network which is your net worth" - but hey ho - still a cool blog idea.
As Andrew quotes Benjamin Franklin who says:
“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones”
But this was before the world of the internet and Linkedin - and perhaps he was thinking about something else :)
Habit forming
Waking up early, eating healthy, exercising, meditating, working hard; these are all habits that most of us crave for. Most successful people are good at habit forming and most of those who struggle to form them, struggle to be successful. Being positive and staying successful is in itself a habit. Learning the process of habit forming is one tool that will help you for the rest of your life and this is what has worked for me personally.
Habit Forming Tips to Help You Form Any Habit Quickly
Tip 1 – Start ridiculously small.
This is the most important thing to remember with habit forming. When you are trying to form any habit, you are also trying to quit the habit of not doing that thing. Interesting perspective right? For example, If you are a network marketer and want to start calling ten people a day, you should keep it in mind that you are already in the bad habit of not calling ten people a day. So its sometimes hard for you to break that habit and form the exact opposite of it. That’s why its often the case that if you try to go to the gym daily, you might do it once or twice but then find some excuse not to go. In the beginning all that matters is to be consistent even if it’s so small that it doesn’t provide you any benefit at first. But, this is how habit forming develops. When I say a ridiculously small step I mean like starting with just one phone call the first day for a few days. How ridiculous is that! Just 1 phone call! You can have absolutely no excuse for not making one phone call in one day. The point is to repeat the activity daily for at least a month for maximum habit forming effect. That will ingrain it as a habit. So don’t make it too difficult to ensure that you maintain that consistency of calling people every day.
Tip 2 – Increase intensity in baby steps.
Once you start with very small steps, slowly you’ll start feeling more confident about it and that is when you will notice habit forming is working. That’s the time to increase the amount and that should be done in little baby steps. You don’t want to put too much pressure on your newly formed habit as that might lead you to crash and burn. If you’ve been gradually habit forming by building up the number of phone calls you make on a daily basis you’ll start feeling better about yourself so you can start doing a little more. Do 5-6 phone calls per day. But don’t try to increase too much. This is still early days for your habit and it’s more important to take things slow so as to make sure that you do it consistently.
Tip 3 – Never miss 3 days in a row.
Once you start habit forming consistently make sure that you never miss 3 days in a row. It’s okay to miss one day here and there. Sometimes laziness catches us unaware and a day is missed even though its still only a ridiculously small amount of activity being undertaken. You find that illusive excuse for not making that call. That’s okay. Don’t fret too much about it. 2 days in a row should sound the alarm in your head. If you miss 2 days in a row, your most important task for the next day should be to make that call.
Tip 4 – Reward yourself for reaching milestones.
Habit forming is hard work and if you don’t reward yourself for hard work, after a while your brain is going to refuse to do any sort of hard work. So it’s important to set up milestones and goals and reward yourself with a treat whenever you reach those habit forming goals. For example you can set a milestone at calling your leads everyday for a week. When you reach that goal, give yourself a day off where you sleep in late and relax (or whatever you consider to be a reward) This will let your brain make the connection between working through pain and getting a pleasurable reward.
Habit Forming Will Change Your Life
If you apply these habit forming tips you can start to apply these tips to all areas of your life and business. Instead of going head on against old habits and failing again and again it’s much better to be smart about the whole process and learn these simple steps to forming habits. Once you understand and start applying this process in your life, no habit will be too hard to form and you’ll be that much closer to success. This is a great quote which sums up the power of forming habits:
Successful people are simply those with successful habits – Brian Tracy
I liked it - apart from the first quote - where I would think it is "your network which is your net worth" - but hey ho - still a cool blog idea.
As Andrew quotes Benjamin Franklin who says:
“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones”
But this was before the world of the internet and Linkedin - and perhaps he was thinking about something else :)
Habit forming
Waking up early, eating healthy, exercising, meditating, working hard; these are all habits that most of us crave for. Most successful people are good at habit forming and most of those who struggle to form them, struggle to be successful. Being positive and staying successful is in itself a habit. Learning the process of habit forming is one tool that will help you for the rest of your life and this is what has worked for me personally.
Habit Forming Tips to Help You Form Any Habit Quickly
Tip 1 – Start ridiculously small.
This is the most important thing to remember with habit forming. When you are trying to form any habit, you are also trying to quit the habit of not doing that thing. Interesting perspective right? For example, If you are a network marketer and want to start calling ten people a day, you should keep it in mind that you are already in the bad habit of not calling ten people a day. So its sometimes hard for you to break that habit and form the exact opposite of it. That’s why its often the case that if you try to go to the gym daily, you might do it once or twice but then find some excuse not to go. In the beginning all that matters is to be consistent even if it’s so small that it doesn’t provide you any benefit at first. But, this is how habit forming develops. When I say a ridiculously small step I mean like starting with just one phone call the first day for a few days. How ridiculous is that! Just 1 phone call! You can have absolutely no excuse for not making one phone call in one day. The point is to repeat the activity daily for at least a month for maximum habit forming effect. That will ingrain it as a habit. So don’t make it too difficult to ensure that you maintain that consistency of calling people every day.
Tip 2 – Increase intensity in baby steps.
Once you start with very small steps, slowly you’ll start feeling more confident about it and that is when you will notice habit forming is working. That’s the time to increase the amount and that should be done in little baby steps. You don’t want to put too much pressure on your newly formed habit as that might lead you to crash and burn. If you’ve been gradually habit forming by building up the number of phone calls you make on a daily basis you’ll start feeling better about yourself so you can start doing a little more. Do 5-6 phone calls per day. But don’t try to increase too much. This is still early days for your habit and it’s more important to take things slow so as to make sure that you do it consistently.
Tip 3 – Never miss 3 days in a row.
Once you start habit forming consistently make sure that you never miss 3 days in a row. It’s okay to miss one day here and there. Sometimes laziness catches us unaware and a day is missed even though its still only a ridiculously small amount of activity being undertaken. You find that illusive excuse for not making that call. That’s okay. Don’t fret too much about it. 2 days in a row should sound the alarm in your head. If you miss 2 days in a row, your most important task for the next day should be to make that call.
Tip 4 – Reward yourself for reaching milestones.
Habit forming is hard work and if you don’t reward yourself for hard work, after a while your brain is going to refuse to do any sort of hard work. So it’s important to set up milestones and goals and reward yourself with a treat whenever you reach those habit forming goals. For example you can set a milestone at calling your leads everyday for a week. When you reach that goal, give yourself a day off where you sleep in late and relax (or whatever you consider to be a reward) This will let your brain make the connection between working through pain and getting a pleasurable reward.
Habit Forming Will Change Your Life
If you apply these habit forming tips you can start to apply these tips to all areas of your life and business. Instead of going head on against old habits and failing again and again it’s much better to be smart about the whole process and learn these simple steps to forming habits. Once you understand and start applying this process in your life, no habit will be too hard to form and you’ll be that much closer to success. This is a great quote which sums up the power of forming habits:
Successful people are simply those with successful habits – Brian Tracy
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