Friday Failure Club: FACE YOUR FEAR
Face Your Fear of Narrative Art Comic Book Marketing Head-On
Shopping list, hiring, email launches, owning your own business. This episode has everything narrative art marketers need to get them off the couch and on the computers. Rembember Liz: she’s making this Handyman list of services…
She’s got a great name Checklist Home Services and a good logo.
There are many valuable insights to draw from this story.
THE SHOPPING LIST
The logo reminds me of what one of designers used to come up–you know the ridiculous world of business. Your ill-advised managers always ask you to do something, but never give you the resources to do it. Well, this designer introduced me to a shopping cart list…
Everything in this list is things that he would need from me to be able to do the job I asked him to do…This is a great system. It helped me be a better manager and it got me what I wanted. We used that method for years to make sure we were both on the same page. We just wrote down the list and checked off the items to get to the goal we needed to go to.
HIRING
“You have to jump into things before you are fully ready for them. Not foolish leaps, but calculated leaps.”
I don’t like the idea of hiring. I never have. I like the idea of people running their own business. I wonder what it would be like if she gave the employees a piece of the company to work together. Why doesn’t she 10-99 these guys? She wants security. I think people will rise to the challenge to fulfill the obligations required of them.
I freelance everything and I pay to secure people’s services so they’ll work on my projects first.
EMAIL LAUNCH
Wow. She got 7 of 500 for people who are interested in her business right away! That was amazing. She was hoping to get 50, but 7 listening to her were really exciting because these are people who may or may not have had any interest in doing anything like this before.
Imagine what will happen when she gets targeted leads who actually want what she has to offer instead of just people poking around and many of which she has not had any contact from at all.
I wonder how many will end up being paying customers…maybe no one…we just have to keep moving on to fulfill our dream anyway. This is the Pain #1 of Marketing–No one cares what you have to offer. You can find the other pains by downloading the free ebook: the 5 Pains of Marketing.
OWNING YOUR OWN BUSINESS
Running a business must be hard. You have to be ready to go as soon as the phone rings, it may be from a new customer or an existing customer, or whoever, they called you they want you.
I needed to get my faucet repaired today. I could have spent 4 hours doing it and learning how to do it, or I could just call someone up who is eager to take my money and do a great job quickly. I don’t have to worry about it being done wrong. I don’t have worry about it not being done at all–unfinished projects take so much room in your head–just get it done and move on. The quicker you can take action, the better.
I wanted my head decluttered from this broken sink, so I looked up on Google plumbers in Nixa. I clicked on 3 sites. One did commercial and residential, one was a local guy with his face on the page, and one was a super professional site. I called the super professional site, they routed me to some call center and then gave me a number to call a local guy. We got disconnected, I called again. He didn’t have any openings until this afternoon. I told him I’d call him back.
I called the local guy, (the guy with his full body holding some plumbing and fixing a sink.) The site is not professional looking, but I don’t want a designer, I want a plumber to fix my pipes. He said he could be there in 2 hours after he finished a job. Done. Come on out.
10 minutes later…
He calls back. Daniel, I’ve got somebody I’m sending your way. He’ll be there in 45 minutes. Awesome.
1 minute later…
The first guy calls back. He said, “I just had a cancellation and can get to you this morning.” I told him I already called somebody else. If the local guy hadn’t called back I may have gone with this guy. Can you imagine the difference one phone call can make, or one website, or one design? Putting all these things in place can be a little overwhelming. But it didn’t stop these guys, they wanted my business.
They put a website up. They got ranked in search engines. They had some kind of visuals on the website. They knew they wanted to own their own business and they did it. It’s not pretty. But it’s moving, and it’s theirs. If only we could all do this.
If you want to find out about learning to face your fears and live your dreams. Download my free ebook: Dream Streaming