Pat Flynn
I thought this might be a fun way to get you to think about your entrepreneurial journey in another light. I hope you enjoy.
If you ever get stuck and want to give up, or don’t know why what you’re doing isn’t working out like you thought it would, think back to these laws and how they apply to you. Please note that when I say ‘business’, I mean your website, your online or offline store, your blog, your email list, your twitter or subscriber follower count, your love life—ANYTHING. Here is the first Law.
Law #1: Every business in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
Law #1 can be applied to your business in many ways:
First, if you don’t already have a business, you can hope and dream all you want, but you will not see any results unless some kind of action is taken. This should be obvious. In order to find business success, some kind of productive action must be taken, some external force by YOU to get your dreams of success out of rest and into motion.
If you have a business, but it’s not going anywhere, you’re not alone. I’ve talked about this before, but how many blogs have you come across where the last post was from over 6 months prior? Many of these people setup their businesses (blogs) but after a while are met with less than satisfactory results. Maybe no one is visiting their blog or they are not selling any products, and they are just flat-lining on the results axis. If you’re business is in a state that you don’t like, apply an external force. A marketing campaign, a redesign, a new product, a joint venture—something that will get you the results you want. Don’t give up just because you’re not seeing results right away. Have you tried applying an external force? If not, you didn’t fail—you’re just not done yet. See unnecessary graph below:
If you have a business and it’s doing really well—awesome. Now, you have two choices:
- Keep it that way. This is done by making sure no external forces are negatively changing your results and getting in your way. For example, making sure your product(s) are meeting the needs of changing markets, making sure you’re satisfying your customers, making sure you’re staying on top of your keyword research and SEO, making sure you’re on top of your company’s financials, making sure you’re getting enough sleep and have enough energy to see things through, etc. Or, you can…
- Make it even better and take it to the next level. Use external forces to make your results even better. For example, I was selling an Ebook Study Guide for $29.95. I was happy making $7-8k a month. Insert audio guide…Booyah! Up to $30k in one month. Again, see graph below:
Lastly, If you have a business and it’s going downhill, figure out what external forces are causing this to happen, and then counter accordingly. You’ve heard the phrase “everything happens for a reason”, right? Well, this applies to the online business and marketing world too. Do what you can to find out what is causing you to lose visitors, decrease sales, have unhappy customers, whatever. An easy way to do this is just to stay involved with your business and the trends in the industry. No, this doesn’t mean reading about it 24 hours a day, but reading emails, listening to customers, and staying focused on what’s happening every once and a while can help you figure out what the deal is. Here’s a personal example:
Between June and July of 2009, my monthly income fell from about $26k to $9k. That’s huge. Luckily, because I knew the exam I wrote a study guide for was expiring, I expected this drastic change. In fact, I was still able to generate $9k by creating a product for the new exam just in time for the change. If i didn’t know the exam was going to expire, it would have been $26k to absolute zero. This is an example of an external force that cannot be changed, but one that I addressed to keep my business running as strong as possible.
Unfortunately, there may be external forces that we just cannot control and may not have an answer for. For example, you may have read that I was recently forced to change my domain name from intheleed.com to GreenExamAcademy.com. Because of this, most of the SEO work done for intheleed.com will have to be redone for the new domain, which will take some time and will definitely have an impact on my income from this source.
What I’ve learned is that you should do everything in your power to create the results you want, but make sure you do the proper research first so you don’t have external forces acting upon you later which may eventually put all of that motion you’ve been working on back to rest. Using a trademark in a domain name, although may not be met by an external force all the time, certainly opens up the possibility.
So, how does Law #1 apply to you? You don’t have to comment (you can if you wish), but at least give it 2 minutes of thought.
Law #2 is next. Can you guess what it is?
