Normally a question like that is designed to see how sophisticated the askee’s tastes are. Will he say the Bible? The Complete Works of Shakespeare? Great Expectations? What profundity awaits us today?

In this case, the answer was a little more prosaic than that: “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuiding.”

Indeed.

Let’s start with a story.

A little while back (this was after the internet, just to set the scene), I was on Amazon looking at a book that had recently come out and received a number of mixed reviews.

One group of reviews fell into the category of “This book is even more powerful than Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding, and if you owned it you would be granted wings to fly yourself off any island you choose.  It will change your life! YOUR LIFE!!!”

(Five star ratings are often like that.)

Another group of reviews – the three and four star reviews – fell into the category of “Here’s what I liked and here’s what I didn’t, and why.”

(Three and four star ratings are where you generally get the opinions of people who read all the way through and paid attention. You’ll get a more balanced story in many of them.)

Another group of reviews – the one and two star variety – fell into the category of “I hate this book! It didn’t tell me HOW to do anything! You just talked about what other people did. Where are the steps?”

Where are the steps, indeed.

Why people don’t generally tell you the steps.

There are two types of business books or business training you can buy – the general kind and the specialized kind.

In the general kind, you get an overview of concepts and ideas that can help you figure out what to do.

In the specialized kind, you get very detailed step-by-step instructions on exactly what you should do, in which order, from start to finish.

However, there’s the tricky part. The person writing the book or the training has no way of knowing what YOU should do, because they don’t know where you are starting from and what “finished” means to you.

They don’t know what applies to you and what doesn’t, or what resources you have access to, or what country you live in, or how much money or time you have to invest in your business, or whether you are trying to build an empire versus just making $30K to quit your day job.

They don’t know if you’re a fast learner or a slow learner, if you’ve got people to help you or you’re going it alone, and how fast you need to make it all work out.

The only way for them to know that would be to write for such a specific audience, in such a specific situation that 99% of the market would be excluded.

So they go generalized, and cover the bases from a general perspective, and count on you being a Cereal Box Person.

Let’s talk about the Cereal Box.

Picture a box of cereal.

Generally, there’s stuff on the outside of the box. Sometimes there’s a free prize inside.

If you bought the box of cereal for the prize, like any rational human, you’re going to dig straight down the second you open the box and root around for the prize, ignoring the cereal.

Which makes sense. When there’s a free prize inside, find me any kid who gives a second thought to the cereal – or the box.

If you buy a book or a piece of training for the free prize inside, you’re going to be on the edge of your seat waiting for the good stuff that will finally tell you exactly what you need to do to make everything better right now.

Sadly, those prizes don’t exist – except for incredibly specialized situations.

If the book you bought was “Set up a WordPress Blog, Step-By-Step,” you’d probably get your free prize right way. It’s a cookie-cutter outcome. It doesn’t get more specialized than that.

If the book you bought was “How to Make A Really Successful Blog,” sorry, no free prize. No cookie-cutter outcome. This is a generalized product.

And to get what you need out of a generalized product, you need to know how to look at a cereal box.

Here’s the part you should stop and read if you’re scanning.

People who are successful rarely become that way because they followed a formula.

More often than not it’s because they paid attention to stuff that was unrelated to their unique situation.

Then they thought about how they could apply and adapt that stuff to solve their problems.

That wording is important.

The answers don’t find you.  You have to find the answers.

There is a difference between asking “What should I do?” and “What does all this make me think of?”

With the first, you’re looking for a free prize inside.

With the second, you’re looking for ideas so you can think critically about what to do with them.

In other words, you’re extrapolating.

You’re asking “Is there anything here that I could apply to my situation?”

I’ve often said that the habitually successful people could read the back of a cereal box and come up with the answer to “What should I do,” because they have practiced extrapolating enough that it’s second nature.

Not because they’re smarter in general.

It’s because they’re trying to be smarter in specific.

These are the Cereal Box People.

They keep their eyes open for ideas and answers.  They expect to find them.  And more often than not, they do.

They see headlines on magazines and think about how they can rewrite them for their sales emails. They see random books on the clearance table and get ideas for new books they could write. They see the the branding on a box of cereal and it sparks an idea that improves their brand.

And most importantly, when they see something in a book that they feel doesn’t apply to them, they ask themselves “Is there anything in this that COULD give me an idea?”

Then they leave a three-star review on Amazon saying “This book didn’t apply to my situation, but it gave me some useful things to think about.”

Think back to the times when something random sparked an idea for you.

That’s what generalized books and training products are there for.

To give you something to extrapolate from.

No book, training product, seminar or online course will ever be able to tell you exactly what to do.  But they can give you ideas, examples, frameworks and starting points that you can extrapolate from.

So the next time you’re wishing there was just something out there telling you what to DO, remember that you’re already capable of figuring it out.

It’s just not second nature yet.

So start practicing.

Do that, and the most generalized of books can give you all the answers you need.

(In the meantime, come join our newsletter.  It’s like a cereal box that arrives via email.)

The question is essentially “Should I put all (or most of) my eggs in this basket? It seems to be extremely popular, and a lot of people say I’m missing out if I don’t get on this now.”

The answer is – well, it’s what we always say. It depends.

Why this choice is difficult in the first place.

When something seems to be extremely popular right now, it’s really difficult to figure out whether it will STILL be popular in the future. And when you can’t know something up front, well, that’s risk.

And we get a bit tetchy when it comes to risk. When the risk seems too high, we hesitate before taking action.

(That’s generally a good thing, by the way. It’s kept the human race alive for a good long while now.)

But when you’re wondering whether New Technology A or New Technology B is going to be a marketing channel worth pouring time and money into, the only thing that can truly take that risk away is a crystal ball.

Lacking one of those, we have to move away from risk elimination all the way over to risk management. And there we can give you some guidelines.

A few questions to ask before embarking upon a new marketing strategy.

When your best internet friend Janet says you should really start running ads on FaceBook / showing up on Twitter / running lots of webinars / whatever, because “that’s where the money is these days”, you need to step back and ask yourself a few questions to see if it’s the right idea for your ittybiz.

#1 – Is this new marketing strategy really working for the masses, or is it really just a subset of people?

Remember that you are not your customer. As a seller, you probably hang out in different circles than your customers are, and you’re going to be biased based on the people you’re exposed to.

When you hear “everyone’s on Twitter,” you have to ask yourself if everyone really IS on Twitter. Is everyone really spending a lot of time there, or are all of your industry colleagues and marketing gurus hanging out on Twitter, so it only feels like “everybody” because of that?

(Keep in mind that the people who you are exposed to on a daily basis are only a small slice of the world. But because they are your whole world, it’s easy to imagine that they’re the whole world.)

Now if Janet says “everybody’s on Facebook,” then you can ask the same question. Is “everyone” really on Facebook? I’m not – I barely ever log in. But my mom does. And my teenage son does. And my 37 year old brother does. And my 50+ year old aunts do, along with every one of their twenty-something kids.

All. the. time.

So I can easily picture almost everyone I know – generationally, everyone – using Facebook, so it stands to reason that the average customer might be. So “everyone” isn’t really a stretch there.

However, the “hot new marketing channel of the day” doesn’t necessarily pass this test.

If you can picture the “type” of person who uses a technology, chances are it’s a smaller segment than you think, and more likely to be a potential fad or popularity bubble.

But if my mom AND my son are both using it, that’s a different story, because they’re certainly not the same “type.”

#2 – Is it “installed,” or could it easily be replaced?

People use the term “ubiquitous” as if it implies some sense of permanence. Ubiquitous means that it is present, appearing or found everywhere. It doesn’t mean it’s staying.

It’s easy to forget that when something is very popular, though. We have this tendency to believe that when things are popular, they are enduring, but that’s not remotely true.

At one time, blog commenting was a major marketing strategy, and it was very effective. A service called StumbleUpon was popular too, and Digg.com seemed to dominate the internet landscape. However, today … not so much.

Yes, they were ubiquitous. But they were not lasting.

A flashy new competitor took all they eyeballs away, or it was just something that was successful because it was novel. Just because it was popular, doesn’t mean it has sticking power.

You know something has a chance of lasting when it’s installed, which means it’s firmly entrenched enough, with enough people, that it’s not going anywhere without a fight.  People aren’t just using the platform, they’re invested in using it.

Email is installed. It’s very difficult to imagine that the world will stop using email, no matter what competing technologies come into play. It’s too integrated. My mom uses it, my son uses it. Gmail has eclipsed Hotmail, and something may come along to pull everyone off of Gmail, but email itself is pretty stable.

So as a marketing channel, email seems like a pretty good place to invest your time and effort. It’s difficult to imagine another technology – even a better technology – making people stop using email.  They’re just too invested.

Generally, the less flashy / sexy / trendy something is, the more potential it has to last, because if people use it, they’re using it because they want to – not because it’s trendy.

So before you invest your time and energy in a new marketing channel, ask yourself how easy it would be for that channel to go away.

Also, think of all the things you’ve seen come and go and ask yourself if you see any similarities between those and the channel you’re considering.

(By the way? This is the reason that Warren Buffet invests in things like Gillette, instead of Microsoft. The chances of a razor company still being around thirty years out is a lot higher than a tech company.)

#3 – Can someone else change the rules?

This is probably the most important question you can ask, because this will reveal where the biggest risk is.

If a third-party company can change the rules and make all your hard work go away, or severely impact your investment, then you’ll want to be very careful.

Facebook can change its layout /interface / terms at anytime it wants and wipe out your carefully crafted marketing plan, or start charging for something that used to be free.

Google can start putting more paid search results at the top of the page, as well as results from Google Plus users, meaning all your hard work to get at the top of the search results puts you, well, not at the top.

Amazon.com can shut down its affiliate program in any state it chooses when it doesn’t want to deal with a political fight in that state over taxes.

Now, it doesn’t look like Facebook, Google or Amazon.com are going anywhere anytime soon, but you need to be aware that if you’re putting all your eggs in the Facebook Ads basket, or the SEO basket, or the Amazon Affiliate basket, that you are not the ones setting the rules of the game.

Which means the rules can change at any time in order to suit the business owner and not the users, and you generally have zero in the area of recourse.

So ask yourself if how much you want to invest in those areas, since you’re looking at a situation that may change drastically and without warning.

#4 – Does my most likely buyer care about this? Does it even make sense for them?

This is kind of like item #1. Just because it’s popular with a lot of people doesn’t mean it’s going to be popular with the people who are buying your products or services.

Millions of people use Twitter, and it’s really really good for marketing, right? Well, it depends.

We’ve run through our customer records, and a very large percentage of the people who give us money don’t use Twitter and are not interested in social media at all, and we are an online marketing training company.

We tend to attract people who aren’t into social media – or who target customers who can’t easily be accessed that way. (Are you going to find a dentist via Twitter? A tow truck through Facebook? A chiropractor on Pintrest?)

Think about your customer. Really, really think about them. And ask yourself if they’re going to respond to the particular marketing channel you are considering.

Do they go for the bright and shiny? Do they have time on their hands? Then webinars might be a good channel for you.

(If they’re likely to be busy, or an advanced market, then not so much.)

Do they fool around on Facebook all day looking for things to click on? Then Facebook ads and a lot of time schmoozing there might pay off.

(If your customers are only logging on to Facebook to tell their kids they don’t call often enough, and why can’t they be like their brother – the DOCTOR – then not so much.)

Do they spend hours and hours searching the web for extremely specific answers to extremely specific questions? Then SEO might be a good place to put your focus.

(If your products and services solve a problem they can’t easily put into words, or isn’t a “must fix” pain point in their life, then not so much.)

We can’t tell you what to do when it comes to choosing the right marketing strategy.

But!

These questions can help you from putting too much time and effort into the wrong ones.

No marketing advice – even from us – is guaranteed to work for your ittybiz, and your customer base.

Next up, we will be talking about the Cereal Box, and how it can help you figure out what to do.

Until then, join us on the IttyBiz Newsletter.  It’s very good.

When someone signs up for your list, or fills out a contact form, quote form, or a “schedule a phone call” form, it’s natural to want as much information about them as you can get your hands on.

However, it is not natural for them to want to give it to you.

This is why you tend to hear marketing types tell you to ask for as little information as possible, because that ups the conversion rate of your form.

This is true. The less information you ask for, the easier it is for them to give it to you.

But since intelligent conversation about the subject tends to stop there (“Don’t ask me why – just do it! I have stats!”), it might be a nice idea to actually take ten seconds to look at why this is true. You know, just because understanding human behavior might come in handy at some point in your life.

Why lots of people don’t want to fill out your forms

Yes, everyone will tell you shorter forms are better.  Often you’ll hear that people are lazy and don’t want to fill out more information than they have to. Sometimes you’ll hear that the jaded, hardened consumer thinks to themselves, “You scammy marketer! You’ll pull my first name out of my cold, dead hand.”

Really?  Is that’s what happening?  Or might it be that people don’t like to provide information that doesn’t seem relevant to what they’re trying to accomplish.

Let’s look at opt-in forms.

If someone is signing up for your email list, why do they need to give you their last name? They’re just getting emails from you. It’s not relevant to them.

For that matter, why do you need their first name, either? Again, they are signing up to receive emails from you. As far as they’re concerned, there’s no personal interaction going on, so the first name field isn’t relevant as far as they’re concerned.

“But wait! having their first name will let me send emails that say ‘Naomi, I have a special message for you.’, and that’s good for conversion, right?”

Yes, it’s good for conversion if your subscriber doesn’t understand that you can automate putting their name in your emails. It takes a very fine hand and a lot of experience to use the first name in an email in a way that doesn’t look obviously inserted. And if you’re on this site, chances are you don’t have that very fine hand.

But back to your subscriber – when they fill out their first name, chances are they know that you’re going to use it to auto-insert their name into emails. So you’ve kind of given away the magic trick, right?

That doesn’t mean don’t use the first name field – do what you want. Just be aware that it might not be worth the drop in conversion. If the subscriber is signing up for an email list, as far as they’re concerned, all they need you to have is their email address.

The same goes for list sign up forms where you ask for different options:

• Phone number: If there’s not a really, really compelling reason for them to feel great about handing out their phone number, do you think they’ll want to fill out your form?

• Position: Are you a CEO or Manager or Employee, or are you in this industry or that? What if what they are isn’t on your list? What if they wonder why on earth you want to know? And do you even know what you’d do with that information that’s worth dropping the conversion of your form?

• How did you hear about us? What if I don’t really know – I just kind of heard about you over time? What if I don’t want to tell you?

This is why these extra requests for information reduce conversion. They don’t match up with the information your subscriber expects in the transaction.

Little example? I went to buy some yarn the other day, and I was in a bit of a rush. The cashier rung up my purchase and then asked me for my postal code. And my phone number. She seemed quite bothered when I didn’t want to give it to her.

Yes, I know why she wanted the information. But she didn’t get why I might not be interested in providing it with no explanation why it was necessary. I wanted yarn. I give her money, she gives me yarn. Are we done now?

(By the way, if she had said “Can I get your email address to send you a coupon for your next purchase,” or “Can I get your postal code? It helps corporate know where our customers are coming from,” it would have been another story. But that’s because now she’s defining a different transaction, and not hiding it in the you-give-me-money-I-give-you-yarn transaction.)

The same goes for forms where you ask specific questions:

Many coaches and consultants have forms where you can fill out your information and request a free consultation with them. Great, that’s a good thing.

However, when we get the question “Why isn’t it working?” and we see the forms, we know exactly why it’s not working. Again, it comes down to how the questions match up with the person’s expectation of what information should be exchanged at this point.

Perhaps what might be expected is something like this:

• Name and email address
• Tell me a just little bit about your situation.

At that point, presumably, you’ll set up a call and talk.

What we usually see is this:

• Name and email address
• What’s your biggest challenge right now?
• What steps have you taken in the past to work on this situation?
• Have you coached with anyone before?
• What’s your budget?
• How much time a week do you spend on X?
• What are you doing right now to address X?
• How would you describe yourself?
• How do you feel about X?
• What does success in X look like to you?
• What are the best times to get in contact?

… and on, and on. Sometimes it’s just one or two questions. Sometimes it’s ten. Either way, it’s not immediately relevant to this transaction – setting up a call.

That’s a lot of information they either might not want to give, or can’t give because the questions are open ended and seem too big for them. And even if they fill them out, that’s a lot to do before they can even click “send.”

“But wait!” You say. “These very successful coaches told me that’s the way to do it!” Well, if it’s not working, maybe they don’t understand how their marketing machine is different than your marketing machine, and why they can get away with it.  And it doesn’t occur to them to think that the rest of the world isn’t just like them.

Maybe they have so much traffic, or such a big list, that even with really poor conversion they’re ok. But you’re not ok.

Maybe they’re telling you that psychologically, the more information people fill out, the more invested they are in the process and the more likely they are to buy from you. They’ll feel like they’ve already put a lot of time into this, and they can’t stop now whether they really want to continue or not. You’ll have to ask yourself if you’d be proud of taking that approach.

What you can do instead:

Just ask for the bare minimum to get them in contact with you. Then you can schedule a call.

And if you really want those questions answered, you can send them an email with those questions and say “Hey, any info here you can give me before the call would be helpful. If you can’t answer some of the questions, don’t worry about it, they don’t necessarily apply but they’re here just in case.”

And you’ll probably get better answers, because now there’s a good reason in their mind to answer them. The answers will help them on the call that they’ve already scheduled.

Ask fewer questions, and you’ll probably get better answers.

Reduce your objectives to what’s relevant for this transaction. Try for the one thing you actually need right now. Reduce commitment. Reduce investment.

Worry about investment later, when your potential customer is actually interested in investing. Just get the sign up now.

This is meant to mean that when you are in a situation where you want to make a big change and that big change involves a lot of (real or perceived) risk – such as jumping off a cliff – you should take the risk.

While you cannot see a net now – and indeed, the net is not there now – it will “appear” when you take the jump. (Causality, while unstated, is implied.)

For obvious reasons, some people have trouble with this advice.

I was asked the other day by a person whose situation I know well, whether or not “jumping” would be good in her situation. She feels like she’s been hearing this advice everywhere she goes, like “Bad Wolf” in Doctor Who.

All she’s hearing these days is, “Jump, and the net will appear.”

Everyone’s jump is different.

Maybe your “jump” is stopping one-on-one client work, even though it’s been your gravy train for years, to focus on, well, something else.

Maybe your “jump” is leaving your lout of a husband, and you’re currently incapable of supporting yourself financially.

Maybe your “jump” is getting out of academia, even though it’s the safe option, the tried and true. You’d rather perish than publish at this point.

Maybe your “jump” is resigning from your job even though your ittybiz doesn’t feel even kinda sorta ready to sustain itself.

Maybe your “jump” is quitting all those affiliate and joint venture promotions where you’re promoting people you don’t really like, but they pay really well. They pay half your salary, but they’re Not Really Nice People, and you’re thinking of cutting the apron strings.

So…

SHOULD you jump? WILL the net appear?

To answer this question, we have to look at what the metaphor means.

On top of your cliff, you have a choice. This jump/net axiom is not used in situations where being on the top of the cliff is untenable. In order for this analogy to work, you really must be able to stay on the top of the cliff indefinitely.

Maybe you’ll be miserable, but you COULD stay.

(If you can’t stay, well, it doesn’t really matter if the net appears, does it? You’re jumping regardless.)

So, you’re on the top of your cliff and something about being on top of this cliff is unsatisfying to you.

Jumping off your cliff carries a lot of risk, and presumably, a lot of reward.

A net would eliminate your risk.

But it only really eliminates your very worst risk – in this case, your risk of death.

Obviously, in the case of quitting coaching or academia, you’re not going to actually die, so it’s metaphorical death.

Let’s temporarily redefine “death” here, then, as “something incredibly bad, and from which it would be impossible to ever recover“.

So a “net” means that you won’t “die”.

OK.

But it doesn’t mean you won’t get hurt.

SHOULD you jump? WILL the net appear?

If you quit coaching or academia, you’re not going to metaphorically die. The worst that could really happen is that you’d experience a few years of unpleasantness. You’re going to get metaphorically injured.

A net can’t protect you from that.

If you leave your job, you’re not going to metaphorically die. The worst that could really happen is that you’d experience a few years of unpleasantness. You’re going to get metaphorically injured.

A net can’t protect you from that.

If you stop shilling for the Not Very Nice Girls, you’re not going to metaphorically die. The worst that could really happen is that you’d experience a few years of unpleasantness. You’re going to get metaphorically injured.

A net can’t protect you from that.

So a “net”, which is there to eliminate your possibility of “death”, actually doesn’t matter, because this situation is not life or death.

It’s a moot point.

And I don’t mean it’s literally not life or death. It’s not even figuratively life or death.

Remember “death” here means “something incredibly bad, and from which it would be impossible to ever recover”.

“I had to sell the minivan and I was really embarrassed and probably lost some opportunities that I won’t get back” is not death.

It’s injury.

As such, a “net” won’t protect you from it.

So, it actually doesn’t matter whether the net appears or not. You’re not going to die, and the net would only stop you from dying. So a net wouldn’t help you anyway.

But you notice how they say “the net will appear” and not “the seven-figure book contract and a harem full of sprites will appear”?

Yeah. It’s a NET. It’s not a winning lottery ticket.

Nets in this context are often referred to as “safety nets”.

They’re not “luxury nets” or “improve my standard of living nets” or “make sure I never feel another ounce of pain nets”.

It’s an air bag, not a free Maserati.

A net won’t stop you from getting battered and bruised and injured.

It won’t stop you from hitting every rock on the way down.

It won’t stop you from disfiguring yourself it the process.

It will stop you from dying.

So, in answer to the question, “Should you jump?”…

Jump when you can handle getting battered and bruised and injured.

Jump when you can handle hitting every rock on the way down.

Jump when disfiguring yourself would be terrible, but survivable.

Or jump when you have no choice.

But don’t let the shimmery coaches or your mother or your sister or your newly actualized best friend tell you to jump if you’re not ready to face the battery.

The jumpier-than-thou won’t be there with you when you’re hitting the rocks.

Only you will be there when you’re hitting the rocks, so jump when you feel strong enough to survive them.

That’s the mandate, right?

More than one call to action and your whole village dies in a fire?

Something like that.

(This is very similar to the fake rules and real rules thing. Remember the sex and the brownies? Reread that one. It has sex and brownies.)

For those of you just joining us, a call to action is a request, suggestion, or command that your reader or visitor do something.

Buy now.

Click this link.

Get a girlfriend already so I can ruin you in divorce court.

In almost all cases, any more than one call to action at a time is suicide.

The visitor’s options on a sales page, for example, should basically be:

1. Buy
2. Leave.

But there are exceptions.

Wanna talk about them? Of course you do.

You can have two calls to action in one of two cases:

1. When your main call to action – “call me for a quote”, for example – is so astoundingly unlikely that you may as well give them something else to do.

Let’s say you sell a service that costs $5,000 and has an 18 month sales cycle. From an actuarial perspective, nobody is calling you for a quote today and you know it. In that case, sure, end your article with “call me for a quote or keep reading the rest of this series”.

The likelihood that any one individual will call you for a quote based on that call to action is so low as to be statistically irrelevant. Yes, you should put the option out there regularly anyway, because it reinforces to Not Yet Clients that you give quotes. Also because you might just get someone in the mood for a quote.

If I do happen to be in the mood to give you FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS at this very moment, I am unlikely to be distracted by the next article in the series. The seriously interested are not flight risks. Having a second call to action does not threaten the sale in this case.

So if there isn’t a real hope in hell that they’ll do your big call to action, by all means, give them something else to do. There’s no real risk here, and you might just keep them on the site long enough to get them on your list or something.

Important aside? This is for content pages only, not sales pages. Your About Page, your blog post, your guest article, whatever.

NOT YOUR SALES PAGE OR YOUR SERVICES PAGE. CONTENT ONLY.

2. I can upgrade the product I’m buying.

Your Next Six Months, or Your Next Six Months with business plan feedback.

Regular or platinum.

Money Calls or Money Calls with Booster pack.

Add the coaching upgrade.

Include the special edition tour DVD.

In the case of an upgrade or upsell option, you can have two calls to action on a sales page.

TWO.

TWO TWO TWO.

Not three.

At three or more, you’re following more of a software-as-service model – you’re offering a choice of versions or packages of the same thing, not one thing with an extra thing.

In that case, the three or more options are not different calls to action. There’s actually only one action the visitor can take, and that’s “choose”. Some services have five levels you can choose from, for example. That’s not five calls to action and it shouldn’t be treated as such. It should be treated as one. You’re asking them to do one thing – choose.

Also, if you’re following that model, you should always have and highlight a default choice. Most popular, best deal, something like that.

The highlighted default option should be honest or seem honest.

If everybody buys Level One and you want them to buy Level Five, don’t say Level Five is the most popular. We all know you’re lying. You can highlight the hell out of Level Two if you want, but don’t get greedy.

The exception here is if you’re offering a substantial relative discount for higher levels. If buying the highest level is the best deal, you’re allowed to make a fuss about that.

This is what you see in in-app purchases from the App Store or iPhone games. Buy 100 gold for $0.99. Buy 1,000 gold for $4.99. Buy 10,000 gold for $9.99. Buy 100,000 gold for $39.99! Highlight that, by all means. You might just get someone drunk enough to do it.

In conclusion, the Fits In A Fortune Cookie version.

Have two calls to action if it can’t hurt.

It can almost always hurt.

For more entertaining advice on calls to action, read the AIDA series. (Hint: the second A stands for Action.)

It’s fun. It’s trans-fat free. It’s ACTUALLY free. Can your Twinkies say that?

Let us further imagine that it takes up a considerable amount of your time.

Now let us last imagine that there are lots of people out there telling you how you should be spending that time.

Not too difficult to imagine so far, right?

If you read – and clearly, you do – you’ll know that there are a lot of people in the world trying to tell you what to do.

If you read about small business – or productivity, or finance, or health and wellness – you’ll know there are a LOT of people in the world trying to tell you what to do.

There are a lot of things that the experts will tell you need to be done.

There are some things you kind of have to do. Get your marketing calendar organized, for example. Change your oil. Brush your teeth.

There are some things that some people have to do if they’re looking to achieve a certain result. If you want to get dates, you should probably bathe, for instance.

There are still other things that, if you’re looking for me to tell you how I like to do it, I’ll do so, but your mileage may vary. I get my customers and clients through writing this blog and The Letter, but I’m not going to tell you that you need to do that. If you’re a misanthropist who can’t write your way out of a wet paper bag, I’m hardly going to tell you that your “pillar content” has to be “epic” and “engaging” for your “community”.

One of the things that has been coming up in my reading and teaching lately is the idea of balance.

You need to balance work and the rest of your life.

You must spend lots of time on radical self care.

You need to get eight hours of sleep a night no matter what else has to slide.

These are business experts saying this stuff. I’m not getting this from Oprah, I’m getting it from business blogs.

I will spend a lot of time telling you what you might want to do with your business, yes. That’s why you’re here, and that’s what you signed up for. I’ll talk about how you should email your list, or how to double your revenue or how to manage your objectives so you don’t sabotage your business.

What I will NOT tell you is how to spend your leisure time.

How you spend the time you are not working on your ittybiz is not my concern, not my purview, and none of my business.

But a lot of business experts seem to think that it IS their business. They seem to think that because they know how to write great advertising copy, they know what’s best for you and the rest of your life.

This peeves me.

As the owner of a small company, I am often told that I should, for example, wake up earlier. That I should close the office door at six. That I should never answer emails in bed.

I’m sure you’re told these things as well.

Take time EACH DAY to work on your hobbies.

Take a day off EVERY WEEK to nourish your soul.

Take baths! (It’s always baths, never showers. Obviously, if you don’t have a bathtub, you will never succeed in business. Oh, and they must be hot baths, with bubbles. If you have a skin condition or you overheat easily, you should probably just go ahead and cancel your merchant account now.)

Read a novel. (Sorry if you prefer watching documentaries.)

Oh, and stop watching Lost.

Basically, it seems like there is a way that The Liberal, Educated Brahmin Elite likes to schedule their work and their play.

If you don’t do it just like they do, or, God help you, if you don’t LIKE the way they do things, you are injuring yourself and ruining your future.

As I said, this peeves me.

I have had several students literally crying lately because they feel like they’re not doing “it” right. They know they should be taking time to relax, they know they should be scheduling some time off, but they’re in a big situation and they feel like they just don’t have the time.

I really don’t like it when self-proclaimed business gurus make my people feel like crap about themselves.

So, if you might be having a bit of a balance conundrum, may I give you my perspective?

Microbalance vs. Macrobalance

Jamie likes to balance his activities most days. He likes to be well-rounded. (He’s a Libra. Hippies, try to contain your shock.)

He spends a couple hours on schoolwork, an hour on the phone with a friend, 20 minutes puttering, a couple hours on work stuff. He watches a lot of TV, plays a lot of video games, paints a lot of miniature models, and gets a lot of work done.

He takes the same length shower at the same time every morning.

Fantastic.

I like, well, not that. I like total immersion. I like to lose myself in things for weeks or months at a time. (I’m a Pisces. Hippies, ditto.)

I do have hobbies. Kind of. I write a book start to finish, non-stop, and then spend three weeks hooking a rug. I spend 18 weeks teaching a class and then spend as much time as I can get away with engaging in scandalous behavior in Las Vegas.

I don’t shower for six days and then I spend six hours in the bathroom exfoliating and buttering myself to a surface texture of melamine.

Also fantastic.

If you spend four hours working hard, and four hours kinda working, and four hours playing, that’s a balance.

If you spend four months working hard, and four months kind of working, and four months playing, that’s also a balance.

Microbalance.

Macrobalance.

Different strokes for different folks.

If you’re in the microbalance camp, the Four Hour Workweek concept of mini-retirement is going to sound absurd. Impractical, unfeasible, and frankly, undesirable.

If you’re in the macrobalance camp, stopping at six to read a nice novel is going to sound absurd. Boring, counterintuitive, and frankly, dangerous.

And if you’re in startup or turnaround, both are going to feel like suicide.

Yes, you need balance.

You can’t just work until you die.

But YOU get to choose what balance works for you.

If I tell you to spend a week in Vegas doing unmentionable things, there’s a pretty good chance that won’t work for you.

If Jamie tells you to spend an hour a night painting Lord of the Rings figurines, there’s a pretty good chance that won’t work for you either.

I don’t know you. Jamie doesn’t know you. We don’t know what you’re like, what your life is like, what your resources are like.

So my advice on balancing your life?

Trust yourself.

And the guru with the fabulous life telling you that you’re doing it all wrong?

They don’t know you either.

Sometimes listening to expert advice can make you uncomfortable.

But advice shouldn’t make you HURT.

If it hurts, stop listening.

Dear Naomi and Dave,

I was reading through your old confessionals the other day and I don’t know if you still take them but I thought I would try.

I got it in my head that I was going to set this big hairy audacious goal for my blog. I have heard you guys say that you hate that phrase and I am starting to see why! I had such high hopes and sometimes I do okay, but today, I really can’t think of anything to day. Well, I suppose I can think of plenty to say. I just don’t think I can say it very well.

I feel like the entire plan hinges on every blog post. Every time I find myself struggling with a piece of the plan, I get so panicked that it will all fall apart.

I’m starting to feel like a total loser about this. It’s not like me, but I feel like I’m failing. Normally I’m a very optimistic person, but lately it’s getting me down.

Any advice you can offer here would be helpful.

An answer from Naomi:

Once upon a time, Dave and I were at a house party during a blogging conference. Everybody seemed to think that Dave was a big deal, so they schmoozed with him and brought him drinks.

(I think they thought I was his girlfriend, so they ignored me completely. This meant I had to get my own drinks, but I was absolved of the responsibility of hearing people I don’t know tell me how great they are. As far as I’m concerned, I got the better end of the bargain.)

At one point, when the piñata situation became too much for me, I came back to the picnic table where Dave was sitting with a moderately well known internet marketer. (I’m not going to name names, but I promise you, if you’ve heard of this guy, you don’t like him.)

I showed up just in time to catch Moderately Well Known Internet Marketer say what would later become an infamous phrase in our office:

“I mean, you’re only as good as your last launch, right? Gotta keep hustling! You know how it is – one flop and you’re done.”

Dave looked at me and without any transition whatsoever said, “I have never heard such bullshit in my life. This party sucks. Wanna ditch?”

This is why we love Dave.

How this applies to you:

If you feel like you can’t do it today, DON’T DO IT TODAY.

You are NOT only as good as your last launch.

You are NOT only as good as your last sale.

You are NOT only as good as your last blog post.

I have a series I’ve been meaning to write, talking about the time horizon of your ittybiz.

I may get to it soon.

I may start sucking and wait until I don’t suck so much anymore.

You’re allowed to do that, too.

Sometimes it’s not Resistance or procrastination or laziness.

Sometimes you just don’t have it today.

That’s fine.

It’s not a big deal.

Try again tomorrow.

Or, if you said that yesterday, drop it for a while.

Or, if you said that a while ago, drop it forever.

You won’t die. They won’t hate you. You didn’t lose the game.

=-=-=-=-=

P.S. – If you’re sitting on a question you’d like us to answer in the IttyBiz Confessional, feel free to send it over to ninjas@ittybiz.com with “HELP!” in the subject line.  We’ll see what we can do for you.

If you’ve been selling anything for any length of time, you get those emails.

“Oh my God, it’s so gorgeous. I wish I could afford it!”

“I don’t have the money for your Thing but, one day …”

“I’ll be keeping my eye on this until money settles down!”

Today we’re going to talk about where these emails come from, and how to deal with them.

Scary Proposition: They’re lying to you, whether they mean to or not.

The only people who “do not have the money” are people who have no money and no means of getting their hands on some.

That is a very, very, very low percentage of people in first world countries. It is a far lower percentage of people living in first world countries with reliable access to the internet.

And in general, those people don’t send emails like this. They keep their broke-ness quiet, because they don’t have any grand desire to get public about it. More on this at the end.

Here’s what “I can’t afford it” really means:

1. I’ve bought four [things like your product] in the last two months and haven’t used any of them. I’m getting really disillusioned and I’m blaming myself for buying things and not using them. I feel I don’t deserve to buy your thing.

2. My spouse is really pissed off at me because I’ve been spending too much money on the internet/on clothes/on these crazy make-money-online schemes. Your product is not worth making things awkward with my spouse.

3. The last three [things similar to what you sell] I’ve bought haven’t come close to living up to their promises. Now I don’t really trust them, even from you. I think it sounds good right now because I’m excited, but when I actually buy it, I’m going to be really disappointed and mad at myself because I should have known better.

4. My marriage/job/life sucks, and I need some little conveniences to keep me going. (Latte on the way to work. Sending the kids with lunch money instead of lunch. Sending MYSELF with lunch money instead of lunch.) I CAN afford your thing — I do have the money — but if I bought it, I’d have to give up my little conveniences, and I’m not willing to do that.

5. I have another completely valid reason for not buying, but it takes too long to explain and it’s kind of embarrassing. (Examples: I drink too much. I have a feeling my spouse is about to leave me and I need to make sure I have money aside for a divorce and/or alimony. I just came very close to maxing out my credit card, and there’s a big psychological difference between an ALMOST maxed out card and an ACTUALLY maxed out card, and buying your thing would really freak me out.) It’s more important for me to hold on to my money right now.

6. I don’t want to buy your thing but, for whatever reason, I feel the need to justify myself to you. Saying I don’t have the money feels like an inarguable and socially acceptable white lie. I get to feel good because I said nice things about your product, but I don’t actually have to part with my money.

Those people? Plenty of money. They’re just not giving it to YOU, because they have specific priorities that win out at the end of the day.

People who REALLY can’t afford it do one of two things.

One, they do nothing. They know they’re broke, and they accept that part of being broke is not being able to buy things they’d like to have, no matter how helpful owning them might be.

They put your thing on the list of things they’re going to buy when their tax rebate comes in, or they start to save up for it, or they accept that they’ll never buy it. They will very seldom email you to alert you to their plan. They will privately squirrel their money away and when they have enough, you’ll see an order come in.

Two, they will try to find a way. You’d be surprised by how many people do this, and the very creative ways they’ve found to do so.

They could split the cost with a friend.

They could offer to barter.

They could request a payment plan.

They could sell their guitar.

They could cut down on conveniences and luxuries for a few weeks.

I’ve had people offer to get a product now and pay me double its cost after Christmas. I’ve had people take temporary part time jobs to buy consulting. I’ve had people pay me $50 every pay day until they’ve paid off the cost of something.

But an email saying they’d LOVE it but don’t have any money?

Might mean a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean that.

And now, the point of this whole post. What should you DO?

Nothing. Do absolutely nothing.

Do not change your pricing, except maybe to offer a public payment plan, if that’s your bag.

It is very easy to receive these emails and freak out, thinking you’re charging too much for your stuff. (This is particularly true for artists, artisans, crafters and coaches. And authors! Do not drop your Kindle book from $4.99 to $0.99 because people say they can’t afford it.)

There is a difference between “I have no money” and “it’s overpriced”.

If they thought it was overpriced, they would either tell you they thought it was overpriced, or they wouldn’t say anything. They would mentally call you a jerk and go about their day. If they say they can’t afford it, changing the price won’t change their mind.

“No money” isn’t about price. It’s about value.

They don’t currently see it in your thing, and your thing at a different price will probably not change anything. It might. It probably won’t.

Do not stress about your pricing.

Do not write them back and offer them a deal.

Do not be angry at them. (You may privately stew if you like, but try to keep it brief.)

Do not sit around wondering why they send people like you and me emails like this, but not, say, Bill Gates. They have good reasons for emailing you, especially if you already know them. They are trying to be nice.

People will give you ALL SORTS of reasons why they’re not buying. Be nice to them, but try not to pay too much attention to what the reasons are, because odds are, they’re not the real reasons.

But what do I do if I’M the one who doesn’t have any money?

Fair point.

Sometimes you’re on the side of “Dear God, my own cash flow is too scary to even think about looking at., and I need to get more clients/customers fast. How do I turn this business around?”

If that’s you, then check out the Emergency Turnaround Clinic, which absolves you of all pricing woes whatsoever. It’s pay-what-you-can, and you can download it right here.

You know you should be doing more to get people in the door. You don’t relish the idea of hand selling every single buyer.

Should you advertise?

Here are some things to think of:

1. What is the lifetime value of a client or customer?

When people become your client or customer, how much money do they send you now? How much money do they send you over the course of a year? Over the course of their lifetime with you?

This applies for both product and service businesses. If you’re a designer and the average new job gets you $1500 and second jobs from the same client tend to run in the region of $1000, your customer is worth $2500. Unless…

2. How much of your business comes from word-of-mouth?

Good product and service providers get a lot of their business by referral. If I like you, I tell all of my friends about you. How much of your business comes from word of mouth? If every client you get tends to send three more at around the same value, your $2500 customer just became a $10,000 customer.

Not every time, but enough.

3. How good is your ad?

If you’ve done your homework and have created a compelling ad using sound copywriting and design techniques, you’re going to have a whole lot better chance of success.

Don’t fall into the 1950s Ad Man trap, thinking that by simply showing up, the people will start coming. They won’t. I had a banner ad on one website and one of my fellow advertisers wrote me an email asking if I was getting a return on investment.

Over the course of a month I got around 1000 new visitors from the ad.

He’d gotten 46.

Your ad matters.

(Don’t know if you can write a good ad? Check out Copywriting for People Who Categorically Do Not Want To Become Copywriters When They Grow Up. It’s got a crash course in ads, and 12 other crash courses, come to that. And 18 copywriting concepts! And exercises! And writing prompts! There’s a 40-page sample you can check out, too, to see if you like it. Click this link to take a look.)

4. Is the venue right?

If you come to me and you want to run a banner ad on IttyBiz for Cheez Doodles, you won’t necessarily flop, but it’s likely. If you want to run an ad for graphic design or productivity systems or invoicing tools, your odds of success go way up.

Either make sure the place you’re advertising has a targeted audience, or an audience so big that it doesn’t matter.

5. Can you commit?

If your price point is high or your sales cycle is long, you have to stick it out and try your ad for a while. For most products and services, customers and clients don’t buy the first time they ever hear of you.

Example:

“Hi, it’s so nice to meet you! I’m Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz. Wanna buy a few grand worth of consulting and copywriting?”

Amazingly, that doesn’t tend to work.

In addition, and also important, is you cannot get relevant statistics from too short an ad run. You can’t really see if it’s working. And with an ad that relies on multiple exposures, it often takes people longer than a month to decide to buy and by then, your ad is gone.

(The rules here are a little different for pay per click advertising, but most of you are not running pay per click ads. With PPC, you’re not dealing with a sales cycle issue, but you’re still dealing with a “give it long enough to test” issue.)

6. Can you watch the money burn?

Here’s a good rule of thumb. Think about how much you’re thinking of paying in advertising. Let’s say $500.

If you can’t afford to burn that $500 in front of your eyes, you shouldn’t be advertising.

Sometimes ads work and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they need tweaks. Sometimes you misjudge the market or the venue. Sometimes your ad is great but your sales page sucks. (Seriously. We have a book for this.)

If you can’t afford to watch the money burn, you can’t afford to advertise.

(Note: You don’t have to relish the prospect of burning the money. You just have to be able to technically afford it. It probably won’t result in a complete money burn, but it might, and you have to be prepared for that.)

The Bottom Line: Metrics, People

Service providers:

Let’s say lifetime value of a client, including referrals, is $2000. A year’s worth of advertising is going to cost you $1500. Your ad and offering are good enough that it’s pretty likely you’ll score at least one additional client from the spot. The $125 a month isn’t going to leave you homeless.

Then, yeah. Can’t hurt to try it.

Product providers:

Let’s say lifetime value of a customer, including referrals, is $200. The ad still costs $1500 for the year and it still won’t make you broke. Your product has a much shorter sales cycle than a service would, so you’ll get more impulse buys. You’re pretty sure you’re advertising to the right group of people.

You need to score 8 new customers over the course of a YEAR to make the ad worth it.

More Bottom Lines

If it won’t render you homeless…

If your offering is pretty good…

If your ad is pretty good…

If the audience is pretty good…

If you won’t freak out and quit after a month…

Then, yeah. Advertise. You may as well.

Seriously. The Real Bottom Line

Don’t suck too badly, don’t spend too much, and you should be fine.

It was called (something like) “The 10 Businesses That Will Work in 2013.”

(It was actually called something different than that, but if I say the title, I’ll get blocked by your email filters.)

There was a list.

It was pretty good.

On the list, in order:

• Organic food
• Bike store
• Senior transportation services
• Hot lunch delivery
• General contracting services for home renovation
• Patient advocacy
• Irrigation systems
• Mobile apps development
• Pet farewell products and services
• Scooter sales and repair

(I was particularly interested in number 4. That one sounded pretty cool.)

The author of the article said, basically, that she picked these ten because they’re the ones with a hope in hell of working in this climate and for a prolonged period of time thereafter.

Here’s something I noticed about the list.

All but one of them – the exception being mobile apps development – has a concrete, decided-upon-in-advance deliverable.

They’re all BUSINESSES.

When the hot lunch delivery CEO-to-be fills out his application for a business license, he knows in advance what his answer will be to the “so what the hell are you in the business of doing?” question.

Many of our “friends” on Facebook cannot say the same, and it is my contention that therein lies their problem.

Here were a few things that I notice did NOT make the list:

Be a really friendly “connector” and “thought leader” and “build a tribe” and “get 1000 true fans” and then “leverage” that to sell them some as-yet-undefined “premium content”.

Create a thriving community of like-minded world changers.

Build a list of a few thousand people you got through Facebook bribes and then MacGyver the Amazon algorithms with unedited collections of blog posts in the hopes of making six figures on “books”.

It is possible that the reason most of our “friends’” businesses are failing is because they are not, in fact, businesses.

They are actually “taking an activity you enjoy and trying to leverage it into a personal salary” ventures.

And there’s nothing wrong with that – but it’s different from a business.

Here are a few quick ways to determine if you run a business or not:

1. Could you theoretically be eligible for a small business loan?

Small business loans require (among other things) buyer demographics, deliverables, and costs.

If you couldn’t even complete an application, let alone get the loan, you probably don’t have a business.

Banks, governments and venture capitalists like to see – specifically – what you plan to sell, for how much, and to whom.

If you can’t provide that information, either because you don’t know or you haven’t figured it out in detail yet, you probably don’t have a business.

2. What is the ratio of commercial to non-commercial emails in your primary business inbox?

The hot lunch guy doesn’t have many people writing to tell them how much they loved his content.

He doesn’t have many notifications of how many people retweeted him.

He doesn’t get many guest post pitches from people with whom he has no commercial relationship.

If 80% of your email doesn’t come from customers, clients, service providers or suppliers, you probably don’t have a business.

3. How many non-buyers have the guts to get in touch with you?

Nobody calls a pet farewell company if they don’t have a dead pet.

Nobody writes to a bike shop if they don’t have or need a bike.

Hell, (almost) nobody emails JK Rowling to tell her “how much they enjoyed the free sample on Amazon.”

Businesses do not get many emails that start with:

“I haven’t bought any of your products (yet!!!) but I just wanted to say…”

If a lot of people tend to think it’s a good idea to contact you without buying something from you first – or they’re not asking a product or service specific question – you probably don’t have a business.

Maybe you’re an author or a content creator, but you don’t have a business.

4. How much money are you spending on it?

Here’s a ballpark…

If you’re spending less than $20,000 a year on hard costs – employees, advertising, lease, phone lines, whatever – you probably don’t have a business.

That’s a very low number, and I’m only referring to hard costs of doing business.

Not personal expenses for membership programs, or trips to Mexico with gurus.

Skills training I’ll allow, but “Get Paid To Be You!” I will not.

Yes, there are exceptions to the $20,000 guideline.

Not many.

“But I can’t afford that!”

That may be.

And that’s fine.

There is nothing wrong with taking an activity you enjoy and trying to leverage it into a personal salary.

That’s a wonderful thing.

It’s just not a business.

5. Could you theoretically sell it?

Maybe you wouldn’t get much money.

Maybe you wouldn’t want to.

Maybe getting the paperwork organized would be a tsu-tornado-cane.

But COULD you sell it?

If not – if your name and face are splashed around everywhere, and it’s all about your “voice”, and you couldn’t provide revenue predictions – well, you probably don’t have a business.

“Oh, God! It looks like I don’t have a business!”

Please, please, please understand – if you do not have a business, that is okay.

Plenty of people don’t have businesses.

My mom doesn’t have a business, and she’s a very nice lady.

My lawyer clocks in at his day job at 9am and doesn’t have a business, and he’s a very nice man.

There’s nothing wrong with not having a business.

But if you’re wondering why your “business” is failing, it could be that you don’t have a business at all.

If you don’t have a business, you can get one.

If you don’t have twenty grand a year to throw at advertising and fax machines, you can get there.

But only if you decide to create something that could pass all five of those questions.