It wouldn’t be a healthy Friday without Cinco Bala. This weeks top 5 lessons, hacks and quotes I’ve been pondering, applying and battling.
For those of you who are new, this is a concept I took from Tim Ferriss. (This is just focused on MLM and online marketing) If you don’t subscribe to his newsletter. You should do it.
Lesson in Network Marketing: Hate Me – Polarization is potentially the single greatest tool for influence we have in our toolbox as communicators. What polarization means in this context is that I know who my target audience is, I know who my enemy is and I specifically point nearly ALL of my messaging to my target while hurling rocks at my enemy.
This allows you to conjure the feeling in people of “He really gets me. He knows exactly how I feel. I’ve always thought that!”
Have you ever read something from someone you admire and thought, “I always thought that.”
My guess is the answer is yes. And that’s one of the reasons you admire them. Because they confirmed your suspicions, experience and/or desires. Either by accident or intentionally. Polarization is one of the keys to doing it intentionally.
When I first starting writing copy and publishing, I was trying to appeal to the entire community of network marketing and trying even harder not to offend anyone. I was deathly afraid of someone from my old team reading my content and feeling attacked. Because of that, most of my writing was dull and pulled abysmal results in comparison.
It took me a long time to get the guts to really be me. It wasn’t a light switch, it came from publishing content over and over until I finally found my voice.
Truthfully, be polarizing has nothing to do with offending anyone or being that strategic. It simply has to do with taking the time to identify who you want to speak to and what you stand against. After you do that, you simply use that as your baseline whenever you publish.
Translated another way – You simply BE authentically YOU.
If something makes you angry, talk about it.
If you love something, say it.
Just be you and don’t be afraid to point a finger at the enemy. (Just don’t call out a persons name specifically. Demonize thought processes, not people.)
Lesson in Online Marketing: Publish – I mean put content out there consistently on any platform. When you’re first starting out, this can seem daunting, overwhelming and scary. I get it. At first, you won’t want to have too strong of a message (read: offend people) and you’ll try to appeal to everyone, while this won’t help strongly influence people, it’s ok at first. Don’t put pressure on yourself. The point is to just get out there and start publishing content.
Your goal: To become someone trustworthy in your niche. See, when someone searches my name, stuff comes up. I by no means have a huge blog or online presence but there is enough there for people to realize “Ok, this dude is not a random fly by night guy. He didn’t just throw a webinar up yesterday. He seems legit.” That’s goal #1.
Goal #2 is to establish authority in your niche. (See Blue Ocean) It not only adds another free traffic source to your offers but it allows you to find your voice (so you can be more effective in all your messaging) and allows you to add value to people before asking for it. A good portion of our customers have heard or seen our content before officially coming into our world. And we have a very small “footprint” compared to some.
Lastly, pick a platform to publish on. At first, just pick one while you find your voice. No need to overwhelm yourself. For me, it was Instagram at first. But I found that I couldn’t really “say” all that I wanted to in just those little descriptions. So I moved to podcasting. It was easy for me to do. Fell into my natural strengths and was fun. THat’s what you’re looking for.
If you love video – Start with YouTube.
Writing? – Blog
Social butterfly? – Facebook
Public Speaking or audio? – Podcast
Taking or creating photos + writing – Instagram
Bonus lesson in Marketing: Blue Ocean – If you’ve never heard of the concept, please search “Blue ocean strategy.” There’s a lot of good articles about this topic and even a book. Summed up it means to market to a niche that you CREATED within a niche that has proven to be profitable. It’s the best of both worlds. Being the FIRST in a market (because you invented it) and being in a market that has money (because people are buying.)
I also just recorded a podcast last week about implementing the blue ocean strategy in your business, I recommend listening to that before implementing any of the other lessons I’ve mentioned today.
Example: If you’re primarily promoting your business opportunity, your market is “Wealth.”
Your submarket is MLM. Other sub markets would be house flipping, day trading, freelancing etc.
The MLM market is quite saturated as you know. But it’s proven to be quite profitable. Your goal is to carve out a niche inside the MLM market. An few examples I rattled off in the podcast are:
Single dads in MLM…
MLM for 60 plus-ers…
Online Network Marketing for School Teachers…
And the list goes on…
The reasons people don’t carve out their blue ocean is because they’re either too lazy to think about it. (Thinking is hard work.)
Or they don’t want to “miss out” on the people not in their blue ocean. See the lesson above on polarization to cleanse yourself. 😀
Quote I Love: “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because the were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs
Something I Missed: Sunshine – I used to think that people who suffered from the whole “climate” disorder thing were weak. Really? You’re sad because you don’t see the sun? Please.
But after going back and forth from Bali (sunny) to Kuala Lumpur (cloudy), I personally feel the difference. I am way more relaxed, less irritable and get more done in a sunny climate.
So to anyone who has the climate syndrome thing – Don’t let it be an excuse for inaction or bad behavior BUT I’m sorry and I understand. I understand a lot more than I ever did.
Needless to say, Chicago is not very high on my list of places to move back to. Mom, start packing the house 😉
Talk soon,
Zach
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