A Brief Guide To Doing What Works

First, I will tell you a story of when I was fat.

Then I will tell you what this has to do with your business.

The Fat Story

Once upon a time, I gained some weight. In my world, on my frame, it was quite a lot of weight. I'm 5'4″, and I went up to a little over 170 pounds.

I read a lot about wheat and dairy intolerance, and thought maybe I would try ditching them. I also wanted to run a race at Disney, because, well, Disney.

So I gave up wheat and dairy, put myself on a (pretty awesome) 4x a day meal plan. I did training runs 3 or 4 times a week.

Soon enough, I was down to 135 lb, my lowest adult weight.

Being 135 lb was fun for a while, and then I went to Venice. Venice has a lot of pasta and gelato. At some point on the trip, after perhaps consuming a little more wine than was strictly necessary, I decided to eat some gnocchi. And then some banana gelato. (Because, banana.)

That was four years ago. I now weigh 180 lb.

(Math moment: That is heavier than before.)

Over the last several months, I have been tearing my hair out, trying to “figure out how to lose weight”. It's been quite bad for productivity, actually. Over and over, I've been eating my garlic bread and annoying my friends, saying, “I just can't figure out how to lose the weight!”

At some point, a brave friend said, “What did you do before?”

“I gave up wheat and dairy, and trained for a race.”

“Well, if it worked before, do it again.”

I have a client in a similar situation. She did a webinar for list growth. She did it the pretty standard style – Facebook ad, landing page, webinar, some free goodies. It worked really well. She was happy with her Cost Per Lead, and she gained 250 or so people for her list. (250 engaged leads is significant for anybody. Given that her list was previously around 400 people, that's enormous.)

So we're talking, and she's having a tough day, and she says (I swear to God) “I just can't figure out how to grow my list!”

Well. Doesn't THAT sound familiar!

So I said to her (giving full credit to my brave friend) that perhaps she should do what she did before. If she got 250 leads for a fair price then, it stands to reason she could get 250 leads for a fair price now.

There's nothing to figure out.