Weekly Update – February 14, 2019

This is how they do it in HELL…

In a particularly memorable portrayal of Hell, an author told a story about a guy who was forced to work as a waiter. In order to get out of Hell the man had to make $100 in tips in a single night.

Every night he would make $99 and then bitch, moan, and grumble about his fate the rest of the night. The next day, he was forced to start all over again from zero.

The man suffered in Hell for all eternity because he never analyzed what he did right to get the $99 and what he could do better to increase the tally up to his goal. Instead, he focused only on the fact that his tips were not enough, and then proceeded to do the same thing again the next night – prolonging his stay in Hell through the process.

Most of us do the same thing with our business.

Most of us NEVER analyze our successes.

Most of us sit around and bitch (at worst) or do the same thing over and over (at best) – thereby prolonging our stay in less-than-perfect circumstances (Hell).

I was reminded of this the other day when I had something unusual happen. I sent out an article to my list and had an almost 400% spike in sales. It had nothing to do with an affiliate, or buying traffic, or anything else. The spike in sales (and the massive increase in profit) came as a result of just this one specific article.

Then, the next day, I went back to doing things the same way, and the spike didn’t continue. For about a week I sat there bitching about the fact that the sales had spiked and then dipped again (to a “normal” level that would still make 99% of all online business owners ecstatic, by the way).

Instead of analyzing my success, I was concentrating on the things that weren’t going “right” and actually getting mad that the trend didn’t continue.

Then, fortunately, I pulled my head out of my nether regions and decided to analyze what I did DIFFERENTLY on the day sales spiked. I looked at everything from the length of the teaser I sent out, to the topic of the article, to the actual link people clicked and the structure of the article itself.

When I did that (took me about 45 minutes to really look at it and write up my thoughts), I found 4 things we’d done that I can’t remember us doing all at the same time before.

I’ve since developed a plan to test these variables together to see if they are the “magic sauce” or not – and, if they are, I’m sure they’ll be the topic of a future webinar!  🙂

What’s the point of my story?

Simple.

1. Stop focusing on what’s not working.
2. Stop accepting that the results you’re getting are “as good as it gets.”
3. When you ARE successful (even a little bit), go back and take a look at what you did and didn’t do, as opposed to when you aren’t as successful.

I guarantee if you start doing that your progress will become super-sonic!

Jim