Kick Monday’s Ass: ain’t it fun livin’ in the real world? (Jan 17, 2022)

It’s time to Kick Monday’s Ass…

Life happens… have you baked that into your plans?

I got a timely reminder of that last week when I came down with a head cold (I blame dry mountain air).

At the same time I got a bit of good news… an article I submitted to Entrepreneur LAST YEAR is getting published in the next couple days, which prompted a critical examination of my website copy and positioning along with a frenetic rewrite.

If I had myself scheduled within an inch of my life, like I used to do back in Silicon Valley… 1) I’d probably still be sick instead of on the mend – my colds lasted FOREVER back then, and 2) there’s no way I could have pulled off a complete change in positioning in a weekend.

Space is a necessary – maybe even MANDATORY – piece of running a business. Are you building any for yourself?

One of my good friends is blocking off Wednesdays and Fridays as “focus days” for her business. She doesn’t take calls those days, and in fact spends them mostly offline so she can… you guessed it… focus.

I purposefully limit my calls to only Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so that I’ve got ample time Mondays and Fridays to get shit done (alternatively: sometimes I play hooky on those days and go explore).

My challenge to you: if you’re not already building in buffer time for when life happens, what can you do to add that in ASAP?

Last week on the podcast…

What do you do when someone you admire tells you your business idea won’t work? For my guest, Tracie Shroyer, that bad news was the exact permission she didn’t know she needed to let go of one idea and find another.

Click here and listen to this episode to figure out where you need to be to make your business fit your dream life.

Section 42: Life, The Universe, and Everything…

My goal this year is to write a lot more about my travels and what I’m learning from life on the road.

Since lots of people have been asking me about why I chose to do an adventure for Christmas instead of giving gifts, I decided to make that my first writing project.

Click here to read part one of my “adventure for Christmas” idea (that I hope will become a movement).

Parts 1, 2, and 3 are up and part 4 is coming soon. There are pictures too!

Marketing Minute…

What’s your minimum viable promo?

We often talk about minimum viable product, but not a whole lot of people apply that thinking to a marketing promotion.

I discovered that when I worked in the online product launch world… everyone saw the millions of dollars rolling in during a big JV launch and wanted a piece of that pie.

But the ingredients in that pie include:

• creating a whole lot of assets – one promo I worked on had an email doc over 200 pages long!
• staff and contractors sufficient enough to help you create, manage, test, and execute all those assets
• paying affiliate partners anywhere from 20-50% of each sale (sometimes more, depending on how much your product costs)
• paid ads to maximize the exposure of your promo

That’s a whole lot of investment (not to mention time and commitment of resources) to that big launch.

For most people with a product or service, they don’t need that level of complexity.

Or they can work toward it in stages, with each promo generating enough revenue to pay for the next big push.

One of my favorite examples of a minimum viable promo is Dean Jackson’s “conversational close”. Essentially when Dean has a new offer available, the first thing he does is send an email to his list and say, “here’s what I’m doing, here’s when it’s happening… hit reply if you’re interested”.

No sales page. No videos. No paid ads. Just one initial email and however many replies it takes to qualify or disqualify a lead (hint: when you do this enough, the replies can be systematized too – the majority of people have a fairly finite list of objections).

Odds are you don’t need to make a big production right off the bat – you can go MVP and see who responds. It’s almost a way of validating your product while selling it at the same time.

On repeat this week…

Not gonna lie, now that I have my voice back and am no longer hacking up a lung, I’ve been dancing around scream-singing this at top volume… much to the chagrin of my cat. Today, I bring you Ain’t it Fun by Paramore.

Rock on,
Angie
___________

Where you’re from
You might be the one who’s running things
Well you can ring anybody’s bell to get what you want

See it’s easy to ignore trouble
When you’re living in a bubble

So what are you gonna do when the world don’t orbit around you?
So what are you gonna do when nobody wants to fool with you?

Ain’t it fun living in the real world
Ain’t it good being all alone

Ain’t it good to be on your own
Ain’t it fun you can’t count on no one

Ain’t it fun living in the real world