Beware burnOut
Welcome to your new issue of Action Today.
In this issue:
Lead Article – Beware BurnOut
Also including;
Thought for the day
Exercise your mental muscle
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Hello,
I hope you are all keeping well. This time of year, especially in the UK, is considered to be the most difficult time for many people. We are coming to the end of the dark winter months and even though winters here aren’t as cold as they used to be we long to feel the warmth of the sun.
It is also that time, after the expenses of the festive season, when the need to earn extra income or finally get out of the rat race becomes a more urgent requirement.
My eldest Son has just joined a US organization to head up their European operation and needed to form a new company. He told me that there was a longer than normal delay in getting it set up because more people are registering new companies at this time of year than at any other time.
As information marketers that is interesting news. It reinforces the view that the first few weeks and months of the year can be the most profitable. This is the time of year when more people are open to opportunities than at any other time.
Of course, experienced marketers both offline and online have known this for years but it is good to get some supporting evidence. It is also a timely reminder that if you weren’t ready to catch the tide this year to put a date in your diary for early autumn (or fall for our US friends) to begin putting a new year campaign together for next year.
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Thought for the Day
“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”.
Having a clear focus of where you want your business to go will mean that you avoid the many tempting offers that come your way and take you off course.
Beware Burn-Out
Although in many ways running a business on the internet is not too different to running a traditional brick and mortar business, there are some differences, some of them quite significant.
I’ve been marketing online now for a over 10 years and during that time I’ve seen many changes. The internet is a very different place now to what it was when I started out. The most significant difference is in the number of people online now.
As the internet has matured it has become much harder to get people to join your list, and the activities of a few mindless spammers has made doing business much more difficult.
On the plus side we now have the whole new world of Web 2.0 with the growth of the community sites and the tremendous marketing potential that they offer.
There is one thing that I have seen happening over the years that we all need to beware of and that is what I’ll call burn-out.
Doing business on the Internet is generally a very solitary business. One of the bonuses is that we don’t need large premises and lots of staff to run an Internet business. What that tends to mean though is that we spend a lot of time on our own staring at our computer screens.
This can mean that life can become a very lonely existence. In the early days when you are just getting going, not making any money and working long hours at your business to hopefully speed up the time when the money comes rolling in, you can become so obsessed with your business that you block out everything else.
It is not obvious to you most of the time because you have your head down working away. However, over time the constant struggle to make your business work begins to wear you down. You get tired, frustrated and before you know where you are you begin to lose faith that this thing will ever work.
That is one instance of the burn-out that I’ve seen. There is another variant that I have seen that happens when you finally become successful.
You’ve stuck to your goal and worked hard on your business and at last you do start making some money and life starts to come together. So you ‘rinse and repeat’ if you will. In other words you get one thing working and repeat it over and over. You get a good list of subscribers, put a newsletter together and start sending it out regular as clockwork.
Everything is great – right? Not always. After a while if you are still spending most of your time on your business at the exclusion of a private life you start to feel the need to slacken off. You just need a break from it. You may have been doing it for years by now and again you’re getting tired.
Then if you aren’t careful the frequency of your newsletters drops off, you start to neglect your loyal subscribers and they go away.
I’ve seen this happen to quite a few people, even some of the top people. It can happen to anyone, it’s happened to me on a couple of occasions. I’ve been a subscriber to some newsletters for the whole of the time I’ve been online.
Over that time I’ve noticed that the same thing has happened to them. There have been long gaps between issues at one stage then after a break they have come back stronger than ever.
One of the reasons for this can be lack of focus and I’m going to write about that in a future issue but mainly it is because we just keep going at our business so full on that we don’t allow time for rest and relaxation.
The key lesson here is to build a lifestyle, not just a business. It is vital to have outside interests, a full and happy family life and special time to relax and just think of where you are going with your life.
If you think of nothing but your business and spend all of your time working at it you become too blinkered, your thinking and vision become too narrow and you become much less productive in the process.
If you get out and ‘smell the roses’ now and again, go to the movies or have a nice meal with your partner or family you’ll maintain your enthusiasm and keep your edge and your business will grow faster.
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Your Mental Muscle Workout
What is your passion?
I listen to Bob Proctor a lot. Some of you may have come across him on the Secret – the DVD that is breaking all records for a non-fiction DVD all around the world. However, Bob has been teaching success principles for many years now and when I saw him at the end of last year he looked fitter and more enthusiastic than ever.
For those of you who haven’t come across Bob, he is in his 70’s now and has more energy than many people half his age. I find listening to Bob keeps me on track when life decides to throw you an awkward catch as it does very regularly.
I was listening to one of his messages recently where he was talking about what we wanted to achieve in life. You have no doubt been told that you need to set goals if you want to achieve anything in life. That you need to identify every detail of your goal whether it be a new car, house or wealth.
The problem I have found with this type of goal setting is that it is very difficult to get really excited about these things sometimes. It becomes easier if you put yourself in a feeling place for these things, like test driving the car or looking round the house for example. These experiences go a long way to helping you feel what it would be like to actually have these things.
Something Bob said on the CD really brought home to me where the difficulty really lies. You see, goals are great and we should have them but they can only take you so far. What is far more important is your passion, what Napolean Hill described as your worthy ideal.
As Bob put it a new car is great but would you be prepared to give your life for it? Now if that shocked you as much as it did me listen to his explanation for saying it. Whether we realise it or not we are already giving our life for what we are doing now.
Time doesn’t stand still for any of us and we all have the same 24 hours in every day. The question we should be asking ourselves is what do we ‘really’ want? Deep down inside what do we ‘really’ want? When people look back at your life what would you like them to say about you and your achievements.
If you think about it for even a short while I’d guess it wouldn’t be that you drove nice cars or had a nice house would it?
Think about your passion. Think past making money and get to what your real passion is. Start putting your effort into achieving that and the cars, houses and everything else will arrive as a by product.
I think it was Zig Ziglar who said that if you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want as a result.
Until next time….
Trevor
