Curiosity or Success?
Seth Godin Today wrote something very interesting in his blog post titled “Thirsty”.
Quote from the Blog Post
I’ve noticed that people who read a lot of blogs and a lot of books also tend to be intellectually curious, thirsty for knowledge, quicker to adopt new ideas and more likely to do important work.
I wonder which comes first, the curiosity or the success?
Another blogger found a missing element between curiosity and success “Implementation”.
My first thought was both of them are only half right.
What do you do when you are thirsty? you go and drink water…
And guess what do you do when you have a thirst for knowledge? you go and find the source to quench your thirst. That’s reading.
And this is where process stops.
Internet is such a shining example of this. With so many Keyboard warriors (Like my mentor used to call intellectual masturbators), you can see what happens for intellectually curious.
What’s The Singlemost Factor Behind ANY Successful Website?
If I were to ask you, what’s the singlemost factor behind any successful website then what would be your answer?
This factor is common to Catalog sites, Personal sites, business sites, content sites, portal sites and every other sites that exists.
Here are few of the answers people believe are right-
1. Website Design
2. Slogan
3. Graphics and Logo
4. Marketing approach
5. Any latest Internet Technology (web 2.0, blog and ping, rss feeds etc)
5. any other answer (any answer that talks about getting traffic is not right, we are talking about website)
If your answer is any of the above, then it’s wrong.
The right answer is “The Words You use on your website”.
I know this is surprising but imagine how a website would look like without any words. Imagine what your graphics, design alone without words would say?
In fact if you take any B2B website, remove their words and then look, you’ll get Same design, Same style that it’ll be hard to differentiate between them.
You are on my blog not because you like the design or you just know me or you think this is the next coming of internet technology. No. You are here because of the words I wrote. You are spending time because the Words jump out to you and resonate with you.
Just take google.com the world’s best search engine website. What’d happen if I remove the words.
Can you make head or tail of it? You have no idea what to do? Heck even their logo is made up of word google.
What I did was erase “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” from the buttons above.
Before you came at google, you knew what’ll happen if you enter a term and click “Google Search”. But now you are clueless.
That’s why I suggest in the website, the most important factor is the words you use.
It’ll help differentiate your website than your competitors.
It’ll help you connect with your customers/prospects easily.
It’ll give meaning to your pictures, graphics on your website.
It’ll help you build trust with your visitors.
It’ll help you share information with your visitors/prospects/customers (isn’t that’s the whole reason you got your website?)
Words will help you brand your business and website.
Now the question is does any kind of word will help you? Of course the answer is NO.
You have to use words, that helps your visitors to guide through your website, understand how your website can help, and show them how to get solution to their problems.
Words will make a heck a lot difference if you just open your eyes and listen to your customers voice.
Click Here if your goal is to create a High performing website.
What has internet marketing taught me in last 5 years.
Whew, it has been 5 years and right now I am looking back at the lessons Internet marketing taught me over the years. Of course I am not discussing marketing tactics and techniques here otherwise this blog post will probably turn in a huge book.
First lesson :- Strike and Grab the Opportunity fast whenever it presents
This is the first and most important lesson that you’ll learn while doing Internet Marketing.
It all comes down to speed of implementation. If you are slow, time will move on and chances of your profiting from the opportunity has left you by.
If you compare internet time line to offline line real world time line, then time is moving at least 4 times faster on internet (that’s due to advancement in Internet technologies). The cause and effect can be seen almost immediately of internet technology and time.
People who sit on the side line and wait and check are often late and broke.
That’s why I said speed of implementation is important.
Second Lesson : Ideas are dime a dozen, Action is rarer.
Too many people have way too many ideas… but people who take action are rarer. And thats true in harshest of terms for people on internet. With the access to ever changing technologies, people can exchange ideas in a blink. But People who take action on those ideas are rare and those who do, often succeeds.
Again complimented with first lesson of speed of implementation, this will help you tremendously.
Third lesson : Sell whenever the damn you can
Someone told me, “Every attempt at communication is an attempt of persuasion. Either you are persuading someone or being persuaded by someone”. When I am writing as “Sell whenever the damn you can”, it sounds like a sleazy salesman or slick opportunist.
But that’s not my intent at all.
In internet, the method of communication changes a LOT and if you have a business, you have to learn, adapt and implement different communication methods. If you are selling online you have to utilize every opportunity to communicate efficiently otherwise you’ll not sell at all.
Fourth Lesson : Learn to communicate with written word.
Now as you can guess, learning to write is going to be one of the most important way to communicate online. If you can’t write, you can’t communicate. Oh yes there are videos, audios too but let me say it again, written communication is a HUGE part of Online communities. You just cannot ignore it.
Fifth Lesson : It only takes one silly mistake to get crushed in the time
Doing business ethically is important. With internet and the ease of communication methods, you can be easily crushed. If you are a good businessman, then people won’t be able to slander you even with internet. Why ? because your evangelists(customers) will help you fight against them.
You are nothing but a speck of dirt in the time line and trust me, it’s going to be important to do your business ethically and grow and succeed.
There are many other things I can write here but I think the long laundry list is unnecessary. 5 lessons will suffice for now.
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
Beware of Sharks When You are Getting Your Business Online
How to harness the true power of Internet for an Offline Business?
Business Owners tend to get burned by greedy sharks when it comes to getting their business online. One of the simplest way they get burned is by SEO (Search engine optimization) Experts. Typical SEO techniques might not work for offline business, Infact I dare say, often they don’t need those services at all.
And often these services are quite pricey even at their lowest packages (at around $5000).
Just couple of days I got a call from one of my reader asking about XYZ SEO company’s package. So I checked out their package and I almost spilled my evening tea on my PC’s screen.
SEO services are expensive and they are the kind of the expense sometimes you can live without. Their price ranges from $5000 – $50,000+. If you are wondering if it’s right decision to buy a package like that, then step back and again rationalize.
The worst part is most business owners can’t differentiate between good service or bad service when it comes to SEO. Heck this field is so complicated it even makes most online marketers sweat. And it’s purposely set that way to wring more money out of you.
When it comes to harnessing the true power for an offline business.
You are better off if you focus more towards creating and building relationships with your customer base.
You are better off spending more time utilizing Audio and Video to help create more trust in your visitors.
You are better off spending more time creating product demos which can help you sell more products.
Think of your website as platform which will help you sell more in real world. Do not worry about Typical SEO or things like that.
Think how can your website help your current marketing efforts in your business?
Think how can your website help you relate with your customers?
These questions will help you understand what kind of marketing approach you should use on your website. Without a sound marketing approach all the SEO, all the bells and whistles, all the graphics on your website is just waste of space.
Think about your marketing first, then about your website.
When you can walk on water, take a boat
I was going through my bookshelf looking for something while dusting off the dirt. Frankly, I have no idea why I was looking for it. For some reason, I just stopped writing, got up from my chair and went to look for something.
I have hundreds of books, manuals, binders and printouts on the bookshelf. I felt myself pulling towards this book I read few years ago. It’s called “When you can walk on water, take a boat (Download FREE)” by John Harricharan. The title of the book is not only a beautiful metaphor about life but also something to think about.
When you can walk on water, take a boat.
It’s very much presented in a biographical story where you’ll think about “if it’s true”, “I wonder if all of this happened to John”.
This book will mean different things to different people. It can be true, it can also be a metaphor. When I first read the title of this book, I was like “Whoa, now that’s heavy duty”.
This book is not about religion, or just mindless babble on spirituality. You’ll read a story about how author goes through the process called “LIFE”. In a metaphorical way, he meets god in many shapes and forms (from Krishna to jesus to Buddha).
If spirituality is not your thing, then well and good, I will just like to talk to you about this metaphor about the book title.
Like I talked about how people goes through their life in motions. In the motions of life, even though we might be looking for shortcuts, we are doing it wrong. Life is not a go through process. Instead its a journey. And we are taking every step with out eyes closed and making it harder.
That’s what metaphor is saying “If you can walk on water, don’t waste your energy, take the damn boat”. When I first read the title, it hit me like tons of bricks. I was like “funny, how things can be so simple and we make it so damn complicated”, there’s no need to.
Personally I don’t know what this will mean to you as you are different from me. I do suggest you to take time out and read this book and it’s sequels “Morning has all night coming” and “Journey in the fields of forever”.
Covert Persuasion Or NOT!
Couple of days ago, I was chatting with someone who is studying some persuasion techniques. He was talking about matching, mirroring and “swear to god” techniques that work 
.
I told him, “You cannot persuade anyone who doesn’t want to be persuaded”.
His response was, “No, that’s the beauty of these techniques, you can persuade someone like that”.
Yup, I can see, he is enthusiastic about what he’s learning right now and everything these persuasion experts are saying to him works.
His enthusiasm right now reminded me of the time I spend learning persuasion, NLP and hypnosis. I wasn’t much different from him at that time. Ah, it’s a process everyone goes through.
Young kids (age 4–7) can be great example of the the kind of people who are hard to persuade.
Have you ever faced a kid who has puffed up his cheeks, arms closed and looks away from you when you are telling him why he’ll not get THIS toy?
So far, I’ve not seen any scenario where kids were ever persuaded. They are dead set on getting what they want, and who cares about others…
In persuasion everything comes down to one simple thing, Does the subject want to be persuaded or not?
You cannot make up mind for others. You cannot force your will on others.
In hypnosis, the subject who says “I can’t be hypnotized”, often goes into trance faster. Their refusal is token refusal, it’s like a cry for them “oh yes, pick me, pick me, I want to be hypnotized”.
Now, I can hear people who are into sales grumbling about how often they get rejection and they have to overcome these rejections with ‘persuasive techniques’. So what’s happening there?
Again, the resistance is just a token resistance. Not real at all. If you are in setting with someone trying to sell, the person is interested in one way or another. You just have to over the barriers he/she produce to your sales pitch. People these days have automatic shields against selling. Yet, they are getting sold over things they have interest in.
So how do you go about people who don’t want to be persuaded?
You don’t. There can be many reasons they don’t want to be persuaded, yet.
Notice I said, “YET”. Persuasion changes with Every situation, every person. If they are not ready yet, then you have to wait for them to be open enough to get persuaded.
Like I said earlier, You cannot make decision for others. And it’s true in every walk of life. You don’t have to “attempt” to persuade someone. You just have to be good at Listening, Articulating and Understanding their problem. And the above 3 skills take time to master.
Varun
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
Own Your Business, Don’t get Owned By it.
Yesterday evening, I spent 3 hrs in meeting with one of the sharpest marketing mind in New Delhi. We discussed content, marketing strategies and many others things that we are going to cover in my upcoming seminar on building business.
One of my foundational base is “Scientific advertising”. In this, you have to understand the nature of your product, your company, your customer base and so much more so that you can create a marketing frenzy. It goes beyond what you might think about marketing or selling.
And because I have worked with pretty darn successful companies in New Delhi. I realized they have no concept of marketing and selling. Often their marketers are doing the job of salesman (and doing a piss poor job of it) and their marketing is literally man-handled by people who should have nothing to do with marketing at all.
For Example :– One of the Marketer for this publishing company was more worried about selling the advertisement page for the magazine rather than creating a strategy which results in automatically selling those pages, building a database or may be more effective brand awareness.
And these marketers have gall to brag about how successful their last campaign was. When you ask them what are they going to do afterwards, their silence give you the answer. Sometimes I wonder what exactly they think their job as marketer is?
Ah, I digress.
The problem with institutional advertising is, it’s too time consuming, too resource hogging, too pricey and almost always gets results which cannot be substantiated. This is where most business owners get owned and swallowed by their own business.
And this is exactly where I am going to show how anyone can handle their own marketing with just a shift in mindset. If your base is “scientific advertising”, then you’ll see results of your campaign and be able to realize and make informed decisions whether you should scrap this campaign or not before it starts bleeding your account dry.
And that’s how exactly you should be doing your business.
For example :– I helped a marketer with a full page advertisement which was going on 4 national monthly magazines with re-creating the offer, changing image position and improving the overall impact of the advertisement. The results was staggering. He could not believe how much response his ad got. His office was swamped with calls and people tried to get their hands on the offer.
The best part was he knew when to scrap this campaign as it started losing steam and instantly changed the offer with new advertisement improving his results.
Now this is what I call smart marketing. I did help create the advertisement, but it’s his job to make sure he runs it and follows it afterwards. Most MBA grads spend spray shinning their diploma/degree rather than understand how to actually successful market and campaign their products.
Why You Don’t need to be Self Confident?
I’ve been working on the concept of self image for quite a few years now. One of my earliest discovery lead me to believe it’s more important to have a good self image than self confidence.
It doesn’t matter what kind of situation you are in, you can always work on your self image and improve results you are getting.
About 3 years ago, I found a book by Dr Maxwell Maltz called, “Psycho Cybernetics”. He also puts a lot of importance on the self image rather than confidence. The more I studied, the more I was convinced the power of self image.
If you look at peoples lives (or yours own life), you’ll see, you are a product of habit. If you change any habit, you change as a byproduct of that change. Everything depends on your mental image of yourself that you carry with you always.
Mental image like “I am a failure”, “I am just damn unlucky” or “Damn, I am good” or “I am better marketer than a seller”. Anything that’s your story becomes a mental image.
Your mind starts confirming the image you have in mind by changing your habits. I wonder if you noticed this phenomenon, let’s say you wanted to buy a new car with a special color and suddenly you start seeing this car a LOT more than you used to.
Why? Because your mind creates an abstraction around your sight to make you see things you want to.
Why? because it makes it easier for mind to process the details around you. Otherwise, you’ll end up remembering SOOOOOOOOOOO many things that you’ll go crazy.
So taking the above in consideration, If you think you are unlucky, you’ll start procrastinating every single time and always ending up losing. If you think you are better marketer, you’ll find yourself getting lots of ideas but not being able to close the deals. And so on.
So the process becomes
Mental Image -> Mind confirmation –> Habit change -> Live Results.
You see, the concept of self confidence never even comes up. In fact this concept is so damn flawed that the only one who teaches it are the self development teachers who teaches but does not do it. You know, like they say “Those who can’t do it becomes teacher” is pretty darn true.
Again if you are not confident about selling or may be you can remember anything you read. All you need to do is start changing the image.
I have developed a very sharp memory since my teenage years. About 4 yrs ago, I somehow developed a habit of saying “Ah damn, I just can’t remember people’s name”. And suddenly I found myself forgetting a heck a lot of people’s name. It was like my mind was confirming what I was saying. At that time I was working on the concept of self image so I didn’t have technology like that to create instant change but What I did was started working on my memory and start getting results in 8–10 days.
That’s how powerful this stuff can be. Your self image, your mind is Powerful tool that hasn’t been utilized 100%. Heck I doubt anyone can utilize his mind (may be I need to change image on this idea too).
Change your self image, change your mind, changes your habits and Life.
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
GOOOooooNNNN… That’s sound like Trouble
GOOOOoooonNNNNN… That’s the sound (rather noise) my Hard disk is making right now. At first I didn’t notice it but as the noise kept growing. And that sounds like Trouble with Capital T.
Now I am bit worried.
I am worried because I know it is happening one of the 2 reasons.
1. My Hard disk is dieing.
2. Data cable is not processing data properly.
If you have a business like mine, you’d be shit scared right now. WHY? because most of my stuff related to business is in computers. I don’t have to worry about Data back up as I do it often. But more of the passwords, settings my computer has, important email accounts and emails.
Today is Deewali, and I can’t buy a new hard disk because of the festival holiday. ARGHHH…
First is my to Do list for saving back up is
File & User settings. It’ll keep take care of basic User settings.
Next I am going to back up my Outlook Express (incidently I don’t know how, DAMN).
Third I am going to take complete back up of my Master Boot Record and C Drive. So that I can re-install all the softwares and settings in new hard disk. I am worried because this is going to be my first time trying to do this. I’ll Keep my finger crossed and pray it works in 1st attempt.
As I am taking back up, I am bit stressed.
Before all of this happened, I was working on my Live Online Marketing Seminar Next Week and My 3 Week Workshop on “Effortless writing”. It’s scary because now my focus is divided into many things including seminar and workshop, taking care of seminar attendees etc. Of course, I am worried. But even then I am planning to prepare for it mentally and physically and make my seminar and workshop a SUPER SUCCESS.
I know the distraction caused by this hard disk problem will cost me at least a day. If you are wondering how I am going to cope with it? Well I don’t know. When I focus, I focus completely to my goals. That’s always how I did it and It’s how I am going to do it.
I know, I should have listened to my Hardware friend about backups. But hey, there are always things we learn the hard way. 
Varun Pratap
Desire. Commit. Succeed.
It always hurt when you found out
It isn’t as big as you though.
LOL. I found this picture while net surfing and just couldn’t help myself posting it.
Strategic Internet Marketing- Article Writing – Turn Articles Into Ebooks and get paid
- Why You should Ignore Search Engines?
- Affiliate Marketers – Can You reduce Your Time/Money expenditure by 70%?
- How Not To Suck at making Money?
- Internet Marketing Strategy – Why Do Some Affiliate Marketers Fail?
- My Secret Behind High Speed Writing.
- Market Positioning – 4 Tips to Position Yourself As an Expert in Any Market
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