Sup? This email contains some images so no clue how your inbox will handle it.
You can tell a lot about a person’s business by their definitive goal. This is the ONE goal that they must accomplish no matter what.
If the main goal is $3,000,000 then guess what? Every decision will be based around that goal whether they believe it or not. And there is nothing wrong with monetary goals.
I have them myself.
The problem is the key decisions you make with your business can lead you in the opposite direction of your goal if it doesn’t help your customers.
Let’s stick with the $3,000,000 goal as an example.
If that is my core goal, then when I create content, it’s seen through the lens of making that money. That might mean that every piece of content I create I want to use it to drive people to my mailing list.
I’m sure you’ve seen the people that will tweet something (“What’s your favorite jelly?”) and the follow-up tweet is saying that if you like these kinds of tweets sign up for the mailing list.
It makes no sense! And that’s because they are seen through a lens where the focus isn’t on the customers.
Every email becomes pushy. You get charged $500 for a $3 offer.
Everything that is done doesn’t align with the customers and guess what happens? They make LESS money because of it, Not more.
It’s because they aren’t thinking about the Second-Order Effects. I won’t go too deep into this but it’s a great mental model to use for your business.
I’ll give you a real-world example.
There is this guy who teaches a Paid Ads course. By all measures, it seems like it’s a great course. Last I checked, he sells it for $4,000 and makes great money (over $5 million a year) from it.
But here’s the problem I have with it. You go to the landing page and you get told that the offer is going to expire in 2 days. That’s fine. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
Except…
It doesn’t expire in 48 hours. The clock resets and you can start the funnel all over again.
If you aren’t aware of funnels then it’s easy to fall for this. But if you do know a bit of marketing and you go through this sequence it can easily put you off. And now every single time I see this guy this is all I can think about.
If someone came to me asking for a recommendation on a Paid Ads course I can’t recommend him just because of this.
You can tell that his first goal is money and so he thought of the most effective (to him) way to make it. He believes that if you want to make money, you need to add some type of urgency to the sales process.
Second-Order Thinking didn’t bring him to the idea that someone like me would come across his funnel, see what is really happening, and see him in a negative light.
My goal is to create Happy Citizens. I say that because I’m a world-builder (we’ll get to that in a second) and so everything I do revolves around the goal of creating Happy Citizens.
The Second-Order Thinking is that if I go above and beyond in my way of creating Happy Citizens then those people will want to tell others about me. They’ll feel like they need to because everything is so good here.
It’s why Feel Good Funnels (out this Friday) has so much stuff in it. A lot of the things that come with it could be sold as standalone offers, but to create Happy Citizens it makes more sense to pack more into it at the current price.
Especially when everything ties into each other.
By focusing my goal on making you happy, the assumption is that over time I’ll make more than enough money.
So when thinking about your primary goal (feel free to take mine) always consider the Second-Order Effects that it will bring about.
Your Odd Marketing Tip
This past week was interesting for me on Twitter.
I had two interactions where I created content specific to the person I was engaging with.
The first was with Kasey Jones. Here is the interaction.
And here is the post that I wrote after this interaction. (Pssst, this is the World-Building I was talking about earlier.)
Why did I do this? The main reason is that the hardest thing to do when you’re unknown is to build relationships. There is a ton of advice on how to do that properly online and most of it is cookie-cutter.
“Be helpful.” Whatever that means.
So I decided to go out of my way to show that the interaction I was having with Kasey was genuine. It was also a good excuse to get even more content up on my site for future people.
I can’t control how Kasey viewed the interaction. She could’ve forgotten about it altogether and that’s fine, but I still got more content out of if that is helpful for others.
Plus, it’s something that goes above and beyond what others would do. When you’re still small-time, it’s the things that can’t be automated that usually stand out.
Here is the second interaction:
And here is the post that was created. Again, nothing that was going to immediately generate 1000s of views, but a meaningful interaction because of it.
Plus, it’s another piece of content that builds my world.
But the post wasn’t created for Kevon. The post was created for Lisa who was kind enough to recommend me to Kevon.
I made sure to go out of my way to show her that her recommendation did not go to waste. Did it take longer than me simply saying, “Thanks“?
Yep. But again, it’s the non-automated things that will help you grow over time.
In today’s world, almost everything can be automated and you would be wise to automate a lof the things that you do. But it’s the things that take time and can’t be automated that leave a lasting impression on people.