The entrepreneur curse that kills your marketing? Those 10,000 new ideas that steal your focus. Now, hear me out: You’re an entrepreneur, a visionary. Your ideas keep you afloat. But, if you try to make happen every single one, your business will fail.
This episode is all about how to achieve the FOCUS required to reach the level of success you want. We’ll cover:
- The key to making a Value Ladder… and what yours is likely MISSING
- Where to use those 10,000 new ideas (and still make money!)
- The real problem with INconsistency + how to fix it a.s.a.p.
- Why tracking your numbers really matters here
Tune into this “pep talk” episode from someone who’s been there – and then tag @emilyhirsh on social media with your takeaways! How will you FOCUS in 2019?
Key Points:
[2:48] The Entrepreneur Curse (+ the KEY to breaking it!)
[3:40] 10,000 new ideas? Here’s where those work best.
[4:24] The problem with changing course (i.e. the difference between “okay” and “AMAZING!”)
[5:42] Successful launch? Funnels that WORK? Rinse and repeat.
[8:10] You think people are BORED with the same ‘ol product, but – what do the numbers say?
[9:57] If you’re unsure, start here: “What would Marie Forleo do?”
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Episode Transcripts:
All right you guys. Today we’re going to talk about the entrepreneur curse that kills your marketing. I’m excited to talk about this one, because it’s a big theme that I think is super important in, not only marketing, but also business. There’s obviously a lot of marketing mistakes that people make, but I really think this is a big one, especially for people who have had success with their marketing and then want to scale. And that is, the entrepreneur curse, which is, we can never focus on one thing and we constantly have new ideas, and new things we wanna work on, and new funnels, and new products…
And, this is something that has happened to me so many times where, our client has an amazing launch, like super crazy successful, amazing numbers, above average, like better than what we thought, doubled, tripled our results, and then, we get on our launch recap call, and I’ll hear things like, “Well, we did a webinar this time. Do you think we should do a challenge instead next time?” Or, “I think that I’m gonna switch what my topic is about on the webinar from this pain point to …” And, they don’t say ‘this pain point.’ They’re telling me a topic, but I don’t wanna say exactly, I don’t wanna do examples where someone could pull out who it was. “I wanna switch from this pain point, and this problem, to this one.” And it’s like totally different topics. And it’s the entrepreneurial curse. I’ve been there, and it’s a lot easier for me to see it in another person than it is myself, because I’ve had my fair share of coaches and people around me be like, “No, Emily focus.”
But, if something works well, and your stats are good, like, do more of that, and scale until like, you cannot scale anymore before changing the actual core strategy. Let’s talk about this more, and what this does in marketing. Here’s what I believe you should … how you should look at your marketing. I think everybody needs like a value ladder, and that value ladder can be two or three products. It can be five or six products. It can be built out over years time that you add in different levels of products, but the key is, it has to attract one ideal avatar, one ideal single client. It can’t be mixed messaging. And with the same, they have to have the same problem.
So, you build out that value ladder, and you focus. You focus the crap out of that. Yourself, your team, your company, your marketing dollars is about driving people through the funnels that get them through the value ladder. Now, the only place that you can create new things is at the very front end, is to attract new people to your brand through like, list building and content. The best place, if you need to create new things and new ideas, to do that is literally just video on Facebook to build your brand. Or, it can be new funnels, but it has to be only changing the front end. And don’t do that more than once a quarter. So, that means if you wanna … say like, I wanna launch a video series, and an opt-in, and a webinar … like pick one, and make that as good as it can be, and when you think you’ve made it as good as it can be, make it even better, and then, you can do something new.
But, the problem is that if you have so many different funnels that are leading to the same thing, and you keep on changing it, you can’t perfect any of it. It’ll all be just being done okay instead of amazing. And when it has to do with launches, you think, I feel like entrepreneurs think, “Okay, well I’ve met my max, people are gonna be bored if I do this again in six months.” That’s the thing. Like this client who said, I’m specifically thinking that he said this to me, he launches twice a year. I’m like, “You think people are gonna remember in six months exactly what you did six months ago?” They don’t care about your business as much as you care about it. Like, in remembering all the content. Of course, you remember it, you made all the content, and it feels repetitive to you, but it doesn’t feel repetitive to your ideal customers out there, and it won’t, because when you do something like a webinar the percentage of people who show up live, and watch it is what, 20, 30% of your whole list.
You have such a huge percentage who haven’t seen that, and if you do a webinar very similar, maybe making it a little bit better next time, because it converted, in six months from now people won’t remember that webinar. And people who didn’t show up to the last one will show up to this one and convert. So the important thing is with a launch, like especially with a launch, analyze everything, and everything that worked, do it again. You can make it a little bit better, but don’t throw in a bunch of variables. And I can’t tell you how many people are like coming to us, and like, “Well, we are gonna double the price. We’re gonna change our funnel from a webinar to a challenge, and we’re gonna have a two day open-cart instead of four. I just made those things up, but I’m just like, “Those are all huge, massive variables, and if you do that it’s like your numbers mean basically nothing because you have brand new variables. So do one thing different, and then repeat everything that worked, and then look at the stats.”
So, basically like this applies to two different things, launches and funnels. Take the stats, don’t change what’s working, and just improve what’s not working. If something starts to get saturated, don’t just decide that it’s getting saturated because you think it is. Let the numbers tell you that. If you have an evergreen webinar, and you’re like, “Man, I’ve been running this webinar for six months, like people have to be getting tired of it, I’m gonna change it.” Do your numbers say that? Or, is it still converting well? Because I know people who have the same webinar for years, and it’s still converting.
So, because with ads, like you’re always driving new people into the funnel, so the only place that you need to like really put your emphasis into changing is that, is the ads. The creative on the ads. How you’re attracting that first person to see your brand, so the ads, any videos you put on Facebook for visibility and brand awareness, like that’s where you need to put your creative energy, and don’t constantly change your funnel unless you have data to back it on why you should, so if your webinar conversion starts to tank, if your email open rates start to go down, if your sales percentage conversion goes down, like obviously, then make a change.
If that’s not happening and you don’t have numbers to back it, don’t make a change. And that’s why it’s really important to track your numbers every single week, and … go back and listen to my podcast where I talked about what we track weekly for our clients, because you need that historical data to make decisions in two, three, four, or six, 12+ months from now, because you need that data to see like, comparison. Here is how it’s converting now, here’s how it was converting. What changed in all of the steps in the funnel? So, don’t make changes, don’t lose focus, don’t think something’s not working just because you’re bored of it, unless the numbers say that. If the number say that different story, right?
Then, the only place that you should be putting new content in, and like new creativity, is at the front end, is how people come into contact with your brand. That’s where very strategic, and innovative, and things that stand out, strategies really do amazing things. I want you to think about this, like I work with big multi-million dollar clients, and I want you to look at … Let’s take Marie Forleo for example. Every single B-School launch has been a video series for eight years. They added in a webinar last year. It did amazing, but they still did a video series launch with very similar videos. They do update them, but very similar, like the pain points are the same. The attraction is the same. Eight years. All it’s done is the revenue has exploded. It hasn’t made it go down. People aren’t sick of the video series, and if you say you’re sick of it, because you see all the ads everywhere. I mean, she’s doing well with her launch, so it’s clearly working.
And, look at Russell Brunson who just actually talked to our inner circle about this. His value ladder has gotten more and more focused. If you really look at what he’s offering in the last year, it’s gotten more and more focused. The only thing he puts new things out is things like his 30 day book that he just did, or a new book funnel … front end stuff. It still leads to the same value ladder. Ultimately for him it’s to sell ClickFunnels.
You will see, if you start to pay attention to this, and you start to look at people who are very successful, and you analyze what they’re doing and then their business, you will see that a main theme is their ability to focus and say ‘no’ on changing strategy, and saying ‘no’ to themselves on new ideas. Like, I know because I have to do this to myself, and I’ve done this, and I’ve focused things, and so, I want you to really like check yourself, or ideally have a team who checks you when you say like, “My webinar’s converting. It’s doing really well, so next time like, let’s do a challenge, or let’s totally change the webinar topic.”
And, I’ve seen it too many times. Somebody does that, conversions go down, and afterwards they’re like, “Man, why did we do that? Why did we change it? It did so well the time before.” So, put that creative and innovative energy that all of us have into attracting more people to your brand, and don’t change what’s working unless the numbers tell you to change what’s working, because it will always feel 10 times more boring, and like everybody has seen this to you than it really is, because if you’re doing marketing right, you constantly have new people being funneled into your brand. And I promise you things you did six months ago nobody remembers except for you and your team. Like they don’t, because they have their own business and everything going on.
Don’t let this entrepreneur curse of the lack of focus and like, a million and one new ideas, kill your marketing, because it will. And I spend a lot of my time focusing in and simplifying marketing strategies for our clients, and it’s so, so important. If you guys want access to a really cool report that we put out monthly … Currently recording this, it’s the end of a month, and I will be launching this report soon, so it’s on top of my mind … But that is the Hirsh Marketing Report. So what we do is, we take all of the combined data of ad spend, revenue generated, top converting ads across all different industries, what’s changed on Facebook, what is and isn’t working – and we create an extensive pdf and release it at the beginning of every month.
If you want access to that report, go to HirshMarketingReport.com. Don’t forget to spell Hirsh H-I-R-S-H with no C, and you will get to the right place, and download that report so you can get the next one coming out really soon.
Thanks so much for tuning in today guys.