What's your biggest 911 question?
 

In order for this forum to provide the greatest help to grow your business, we need your comments, questions and concerns.

Growing a small business is an exciting journey, but not without it's challenges along the way.

What are YOUR top 3 challenges in business?

- is it generating new clients?
- or finding ways to get your existing clients back to buy more, at higher price points?
- is it finding quality people to manage the growth?
- is it financing your growth?
- is it finding ways to add 50% new growth to your business in the next 12 months?
- maybe you want to work half the hours you do now?
- or any one of the thousand other issues that small business owners are faced with...

Please let us know what your greatest needs are right now. All comments and questions will be addressed.

Thanks again, Troy White

HARCHIs Top 3 Challenges
 

• HARCHI's Top 3 Challenges
  
  • Overcoming information overload! I started my new career opportunity last year by enrolling in AWAI courses. Then the overload began. Too many GURUs and not enough cash, time, etc... LOL I am just ending my emotional and financial whirlwind and decided to focus on one GURU at a time. I purchased several of Clayton's offerings and am digesting that while refocusing on ACTION! I need to write more and actually get higher paying customers. (It is sad to admit but so far everything is neighborhood marketing. I may be a hero to the local small business owner and my family, but not to me. I am not where I want to be and definitely not in the timeframe I envisioned last year).
  • Developing a personal marketing plan. It has been easier to work for and help clients than helping myself. Maybe I make it too complicated. I am an engineer in the life I am attempting to leave behind. I have a grave feeling I am ‘over-engineering’ my own career. A great action plan/marketing plan would be great! (Or pointers so I can develop my own). My goal is make $100k in the next 12-18 months and then to grow to $200k by the 24-30 month period. This will allow me to pay off all debt (#1 priority. A man can live like a king on a pittance if he owes no debt) and then to live comfortably. By month 60 I want to be in the $500k arena. I guess one of my first stumbling blocks is what route to take – direct response copywriting, DR marketing or a combo?
  • Knowing what market areas to target and then how to break into them. I have a technical background and that seems logical. However, I am passionate about child issues, health (alternative, holistic/wholelistic, ayurvedic, etc…), and not sure which areas I should target to reach my goals.
  

I feel like I have learned alot and I know that is has just been the tip of the iceburg. The reason I picked to focus on Clayton as my GURU/mentor is that he just resonates with me. I like his tone and attitude. I click with what he says. He does marketing with flair and always has the upsell, but I do not feel like I am being 'sold' or pushed like I do with other GURUs. I feel like I am getting "bang for my buck" so to speak.

There you go, Troy. You asked what each of us are looking for. I have just left the starting block and am on my first lap. I will take whatever advice and guidance I can get from my coaches and peers to get where I need to go. Long hours and rejection are OK. The above list is what I 'feel' like my three largest challenges are. Maybe what I need is a swift kick and some lithium!

Love you guys!

Thanks,

Jim

My top 3 challenges are...

(1) Managing cash flow while also growing the business as aggresively as possible.

(2) Taking time off to enjoy life. I'm way to stressed out right now to even think of taking a moments rest.

(3) Sticking to a set schedule for writing and marketing while not letting any of the "fires" get too out of control. Although I do a pretty good job of letting them flame themselves out without much harm or damage.

My top 3 challenges:

1. Moving from lots of little time-consuming, low-paying gigs to larger projects in which I'll get royalties and can really sink my teeth into.

2. Setting aside time for marketing in the midst of "busy periods."

3. Breaking free from the "Lone Ranger" syndrome so that I can grow my business through JV's and other connections.

Thanks,

Sid

in order....

1) finding clients. I'm almost a year into my copywriting studies and have just started (last month or so) charging ahead marketing myself. I've got many routes to take. It's just a lot of work

2) balancing my time between the writing I am doing and the marketing efforts. My goal is to get 10 solid clients this year (may be ambitious, but I figure aim high) and back to the marketing, which is taking up a lot of time.

3) continuing my education. At the moment, I'm getting a lot out of reading and trying to dissect my swipes. It's just that it also tends to take some time.

If only there were about 37 hours in a day!

What I need
 

Huh. This is starting to read like a copywriters only thread :)

I'm not by the way, expect in as far as i have to write my own copy.

What am I in need of?

- is it generating new clients?
Partially. I've got lousy follow up. I actually make about 20-30 new sales per month. But almost no repeat business. Mostly I think because I do basically no follow up.


- is it finding quality people to manage the growth?
This is a biggie, like most SOHO businesses, I have issues trusting
anyone to do the work. And people I do trust, mostly do the same work I'm good at, which is not what I need.

- is it finding ways to add 50% new growth to your business in the next 12 months?
- maybe you want to work half the hours you do now?
These two together cover it. I'd like to be making 100K+ NET, with about 20 hours per week work. In 1 year I'd be debt free, and I'd be spending more time with my family.

Yikes - this got away from me!
 

Some great questions here - I will give my thoughts on as many as I can now - and more in the coming days.

Information overload is HUGE! I fell into it years ago and finally dug my way out of it. The breaking point? A person very close to me that said "do you REALLY need to learn more to make some money - can't you use all your experience and materials you already have to do that?" Duh! Yes! It was enough for me to realize that a huge library is useless if you never finish reading any of it. So I canceled a ton of my newsletter subscriptions. I canceled quite a few of my paid ones - kept the most applicable for me today - can always pick up on them again when needed. And not trying to learn everything from everyone - pick a subject, learn it, apply it, make money from it, perfect it, make a ton more money from it, THEN learn something new.


What to focus on. Another big one. Many people within the internet marketing circles seem to suffer from the "shiny object syndrome" (I did at first too - until I realized what I was falling for). This is when one week you buy the home study course on adwords. Next week you buy the ebook on blogging. The next week article directories. The next - an automated-do-hickey-website-that-does-it-all-for-you-while-you-sleep-bundle.

WITHOUT IMPLEMENTING ANY OF THEM! Or, at best, trying one thing for 3 hours then moving on to the next.

You know how I broke out of this silly game? I used the SQUARES. I created a spreadsheet with 1,000 squares on it - printed it off - and put it right in front of me on my desk. Every hour I invested in learning about my passion (copywriting and marketing launches) - I marked off a half a square (a full square was an X a half square was just half an X - like / ) For every hour I invested in IMPLEMENTING what I learned - I marked off a FULL X.

It was very motivational to see those squares fill up! And it also was very motivated and rewarding to know that the implementation side made them fill up twice as fast.

Once I filled up my first 1,000 squares I saw a huge different in my writing and results. The next 1,000 squares filled up even faster - the next even faster.

It is very addictive - and financially rewarding to focus in on first your passion areas - and then next - your high ROI areas.

Try the squares - they work!

Yes. What they said above.
 

I've been in the advertising and marketing business for all my life -- so far. And I'm just tired of doing this stuff for other people. Clients. Not that I didn't have fun with most of my clients. It's probably the most interesting business in the world. A great way to see, first hand, how the economy and businesses of all types and kinds work in the real world. That's the biggest take-away from my career.

But now, I want to use my skills to do something for myself, totally unrelated. So I'm getting into internet sales -- "the final frontier" of marketing. But I'm finding the technology is overwhelming my ability to put my marketing knowledge to work. I really suck at techno stuff.

That's very frustrating. Most of the people in the virtual world are people younger than my children. They are as familiar with computereez and IT as I am with a telephone -- rotary dial.

I joined AWAI to brush up on my writing skills for internet communications. Mainly because I've never seen such horrid writing and grammar in my life as is on the net.

This helped a lot more than I anticipated. I learned a lot for an old dog. And I met neat people like Clayton in the course of the "bootcamps." He's a great person in my experience. His attitude and ability and even his personality comes through loud and clear in his writing and his newsletter.

He takes his work very seriously. But he doesn't take himself too seriously. It's a cool guy who can do that.

So, to the actual question: I'm struggling with the techies on the internet who know the hard technology cold. But they haven't a clue about marketing. I had to laugh when they thought they'd discovered targeted marketing. It was as if they were the first to uncover this dark secret. As for me, there isn't any other kind of marketing. Never has been.

But I'm so overwhelmed by the technical aspects that I spend more time learning this stuff than implementing tactics and strategies. People I hire to help me know nothing about marketing. But they don't know they don't know. Pretty websites, meta-tags and SEO do not a marketer make.

It's a bit discouraging. But on the other hand, there are those who seem to be able to do both. Again, very young people with a marketing savvy that's incredible. And they're on the net selling me things. And I buy them expecting that this is going to go into my mind by osmosis somehow. But if I hear the word "guru" one more time, I'm going to strangle something.

I'm very happy this site has become available. I'm hoping to learn how to apply the marketing with the technology. Like Clayton and the other masters can apply our written language to marketing.

I haven't had much of a learning "curve." I ask, what "curve?" My learning has been a nearly straight, perpendicular line. My brain is fried and by the time I get the technical crap figured out, the marketing ideas come from a very tired mind.

So I hope this is where I can learn more within the context of what I need to do. You see, I don't give a darn how it works, I just need to have it work for me. Like electricity makes my lights come on. It just does. I don't know how. But it's not a serious concern of mine.

Good luck and here's hoping.