Mastering the marketing mindset

DuctTapeMarketing.com
December 27, 2006

In this issue:

Resource #1 - Duct Tape Marketing, the book - pre-order bonus offer ends Dec 29th
Resource #2 - Free guide - MailChimp's HTML Email Guide
Main Article - Get Abundant - Mastering the Marketing Mindset
Resource #3 - Michael Gerber on Marketing Integrity
Resource #3 - Guy Kawasaki on Building a Community
Free Magazine - Free subscription to PRWeek
Featured Reading - The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success- Deepak Chopra
Featured Listening - Love - The Beatles

Sent to 30,622 small business readers each week. Welcome to the 195 new readers this week!

I will be providing great content the next few weeks surrounding my book launch and pre-order campaign, but I might seem a little book sales focused, please forgive me for that, I'm just trying to get this baby launched right.

You can always view past newsletter issues here!

Featured Resource #1 - pre-order bonus ends Dec 29th!

Duct Tape Marketing - The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide - foreword by Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth, afterword by Guy Kawasaki, author of Art of the Start - Hardcover, 304 Pages, Nelson Business.

Duct Tape Marketing is THE small business marketing road map - A collection of proven tools and tactics woven together in a step-by-step marketing system that shows small business owners exactly what to do to market and grow their businesses.

This guide combines insights gained from over twenty years of successfully working, in the field, with real-life small businesses.

There are no theoretical complexities presented in Duct Tape Marketing - just simple, effective and affordable marketing that sticks.

Special Pre-Order Campaign with thousands of dollars of bonuses when you order 1 or more copies of the book. Check out the book bonus page - ends Dec 29th.

Email Marketing Guide

No matter what your email marketing plans however, I do suggest you get and read MailChimp's free 50 page email marketing guide called Designing, Coding and Delivering HTML Email. HTML email, email that looks like a web page, offers great impact but does come with its own set of challenges. This guide is one of the best I've uncovered that addresses those common challenges and gives you advice on best practices to get your email read and acted on.

Featured Article

Get Abundant - Mastering the Marketing Mindset
Owning your business should be your ticket to wealth, happiness, purpose and passion.

Owning a business is the world’s greatest path to freedom, to growth, to abundance and wealth. Owning your own business is the best way to get off the treadmill of working in fear of the next paycheck. Owning your own business is the secret to having the life you were meant to have – full of passion, profit, purpose and pleasure.

If you’re still with me you know in your heart that what I’ve said above is the promise, it’s the way it’s supposed to be, right? So why isn’t it true? Sure, you’re free, free to work any 80 hours a week you choose, but that’s about it.

Why is it that this business, the thing that promises to be the key to freedom, is actually starting to feel a bit like a jail cell?

I think I have the answer. After working with thousands of small business owners I’ve come to the conclusion that the greatest single reason that most small business owners never fully achieve what’s possible through their business is a mindset that is drenched in a subconscious fear of marketing.

Now, I’m not simply talking about business failure due to a lack of marketing. I’m talking about something I think is actually more painful to witness. I’m talking about a business owner whose business crawls along making just enough money to get by, year after year, never able to achieve any meaningful level of sustainable growth due to fear of fully marketing their business from the heart, from an abundant point of view.

I actually think many small business owners can blame this fear of marketing on their parents. (Like they need something else for us to blame them for) Many people were taught not to be good at marketing from the time they could talk. Somewhere they were told that marketing, self-promoting, was a bad thing.

So, this fear of marketing I’m describing manifests itself in the business owner who claims, ‘I’m just no good at marketing’ or ‘I hate marketing’ or ‘I not very creative’ or ‘it feels unprofessional to promote myself.’ Or, they simply relegate the business to compete on price, rather than getting paid what they’re worth. (But then maybe you own some confusion about what you’re worth too.)

If any of these thoughts sound like you, I’m here to warn you that this marketing mindset or blueprint will hold your business back more than any other single business dynamic.

The prison of marketing fear

The fear of marketing or a lack of an abundant marketing mindset acts like a prison for the small business owner who hides behind it. The tyranny of the same marketing routine, year after year will eventually rob you of any real joy that comes from owning a business.

No matter what your business does. Marketing (a customer) is the engine that makes your business a business. You can't "not like" marketing and really achieve your potential. You can't be "no good" at marketing and expect much from your business. You must wipe those thoughts from your brain.

Effective marketing is the way to achieve wealth and happiness in your business, but only if you’re willing to fully accept this fact.

See, there’s a universal natural law at work here that you simply can’t fight. You can’t have a successful business without successful marketing and you can’t have successful marketing it you don’t like to market – you can’t have what you hate.

I’ve come to discover that I can give a business owner every marketing tip, tool and strategy I have and it won’t make much of a difference until they decide to adopt an abundant marketing mindset. Don’t expect some magic marketing silver bullet to appear and save your business from mediocrity. Only you can do that, only you, equipped with a completely new point of view about what marketing is and what it means to your success.

If you've been taught all your life not to toot your horn, you need to get over it. Here's how. If you know in your heart that you have something, a product or service, that can really help someone get what they want, transform their life, or move to the next level, shame on you for keeping it to yourself.

You can ethically, professionally and honestly toot your horn with an abundance mindset. And, you can accomplish it in a manner that you are proud to be a part of. Holding back on your marketing may actually be a sign that you don't really believe in the value you have to offer.

There are a few new habits you must ‘get’ in the coming year if you intend to replace your current marketing blueprint with an abundant marketing blueprint.

What you must do today

Get Uncomfortable! – Your wealth, your marketing success, will correspond directly with the size of your marketing mindset. Get in front of an audience and speak, write for an industry publication, start blogging, network with prospects, write personal thank you notes. You can’t grow unless you are uncomfortable. Write a book. Start a radio show. Create a podcast. You are so much bigger than you are allowing yourself to be. Reach.

Get and Give New Skills – Read everything about marketing you put your hands on. (Perhaps starting with Duct Tape Marketing!) – Read your direct mail, watch infomercials, read magazines that cover marketing and – this is a big one – look for ways to teach others how to market and promote their businesses. Become known in your industry for your marketing expertise and show others how to do it – how to get the marketing mindset.

Get Bigger Ideas – Tear your products and services apart. Look for ways to approach an industry problem like know one else can or will. Your ideas don’t have to really be that big as long as they are world altering. Come up with one idea this year that makes someone say you are nuts – and then go do it.

Get Value – No matter what you offer, it can be better. Heap more and more on your products and services, give stuff that no one expected you to give. Add services over and above what was agreed upon. Makes people talk about how incredible you are.

Get What You’re Worth – If you do the above, you can do this. Raise your prices. Choose to work with fewer clients at much higher rates. Sell based on value, not on time. And, refuse to work with clients that don’t fully appreciate the value you have to offer. You can make more space in your head to serve your clients when you don’t have clients that bring you down.

Taking small steps

Get Leverage - Set goals for this year, this week, today. Make your goals tangible. Make them about things that will allow you to grow your marketing mindset and tangible measurable things that will remind you that you are in the marketing business.

Set goals for public speaking, writing and generally stepping outside your comfort zone. Set goals for the number of leads generated, leads converted, new clients and referrals. Set goals for your price increases, your effective hourly rate.

Get It Scheduled - Make a place to grow your marketing mindset. Create a marketing appointment with yourself every single day. Create a growth calendar and schedule one uncomfortable activity each week. Make a list of the books you plan to devour this year. Make appointments and introductions with new strategic partners.

Take a good, long, hard look at the suggestions above. Think about ways you can start to rewrite your marketing mindset. Get good at marketing, make marketing your primary focus and you will be on the path to much more profit, success, and freedom as a small business owner

. ~ ~ ~

John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com

You may reprint this article in its entirety if you attribute the article to John Jantsch and include the information about the author above.

Foreword to Duct Tape Marketing

On the Subject of Marketing Integrity
By Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth

I have known John Jantsch for over ten years, first in his role as a certified E-Myth Consultant for my company, E-Myth Worldwide, a role in which he served his clients and my company with the enthusiasm of a disciple, and then later as the founder and CEO of his own marketing consulting firm, Jantsch Communications. During those years, John and I would talk about business, about life, and about his personal process for growing both his business and his knowledge about business so that he could fulfill the single most important objective John has always had—to serve his clients, his community, and his family as best as any man can. Read the rest . . .

Afterword to Duct Tape Marketing

The Art of Creating a Community
By Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start

A duct tape marketer understands the importance of community building. If you’ve read this far, you already get that.

Here’s my take on the art of creating a thriving community around your business.

1. Create something worth building a community around. This is a repeated theme in my writing: the key to evangelism, sales, demoing, and building a community is a great product. Frankly, if you create a great product, you may not be able to stop a community from forming even if you tried. By contrast, it’s hard to build a community around mundane Read the rest . . .

Featured Reading

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Deepak Chopra

I have given this little book to many people. I myself have read it at least 50 times. Each time I read it I gain some new insight.

Chopra mixes spiritual laws and quantum physics with everyday simple ways to grow from the inside.

This book presents some concepts that are hard for some to grasp (myself included) but I think the work is worth it.

Featured Listening

Love - The Beatles

This is a pretty safe bet. The Beatles songs you know and (Love) remastered by long time Beatles' producer George Martin

Featured Resource #1
The Duct Tape Marketing Small Business Marketing System

This complete small business marketing program contains 15 workbooks, 12 audios CDs - packaged in a Duct Tape Marketing 3 ring binder. This is the same tool I use to coach my clients. Find out more.

Featured Resource - The Duct Tape Marketing Workshops - Does Your Group Need a Practical Small Business Marketing Speaker?

I am available to present small business marketing workshops, seminars and keynotes to groups and associations.

Find out more here

Featured Resource #3 -
Referral Flood - How to generate a flood of new business without spending one dime on advertising

The complete referral marketing system with over 50 real world referral tactics, examples and forms. Order now!

Resource - Get Local Search Engine Traffic

Don’t Let Your Small Business Get Left Behind in the Local Search Engine Game

Get your local business found online automatically by local prospects with a Duct Tape Marketing Local Search Engine profile. One of the best ways to get your business found in your town by local prospects. More

Featured Resource #4 - Blog Lightning - How To Create and Promote Your Blog In A Flash

Drawing from my experience creating blogs, including my award winning Duct Tape Marketing Blog, I have launched a complete step-by-step guide that takes you by the hand and shows you exactly what to do to instantly create and promote a successful blog for your business.

You also get 14 video screencast tutorials that allow you to watch over my shoulder as I actually do the steps I outline in the system - It does not get any easier than this! - Order Blog Lightning

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