Commitment isn’t the problem.
The fact that commitment is so rare is the problem.
People don’t want to be committed.
It’s much easier to avoid being committed.
The easier path isn’t always the right one.
business tip
A Rare Day Off
I was typing away another blog post a week ago, and then I realized I didn’t write anything the day before. I had taken the day off. However, it wasn’t a day off. It was a rare day off.
I enjoy writing which is why the rare day off didn’t feel like the best day in the world. People who have 3 different jobs can’t wait for their day off. I try to avoid it as much as possible. In fact, I had been writing for about a year with no days off. Not writing for a day seemed foreign to me.
When you have your next day off, ask yourself if you’re having a day off or a rare day off. If you’re having a rare day off, why is it so rare?
Is Winning The Lottery Good At All?
Spending money on lottery tickets is a big waste. You’re more likely to get struck by lightning than to win the lottery. Spending a lot of money and then not winning at all is lost money. The problem is that people keep on spending.
If people already invested enough of their money and time into lottery tickets, they want to win the entire thing. More money is spent, and lost as a result.
Let’s say you actually win the lottery. Unlikely, but possible. However, the life of a lottery winner isn’t as luxurious as someone may think. To be honest, it is quite luxurious, but that life of luxury is short lived.
Some people make $10 million by winning the lottery. Others make hundreds of millions of dollars. That may seem like enough money for a lifetime, but with great power comes great irresponsibility.
Friends of the lottery winner ask for some of the money. Since the winner only has millions of dollars, the winner will most likely give money to their friends. Not giving the money to friends presents another problem. There have been multiple cases where people attack the lottery winner and take the money.
You may think this is the end of the blog post. Nay, it gets worse. Over half of the lottery winners quit the job they were in. If you are a lottery winner, don’t quit the thing that you love doing. If you don’t love the job you are doing, keep on looking.
Five years after winning, almost half of lottery winners end up spending all of the money. That’s the irresponsibility kicking in, and some of these people end up going bankrupt. It’s amazing how fast and far across the globe money can travel, and a person who thinks they have unlimited money is going to be guilty of foolish spending.
This statistic isn’t just gruesome. It’s absolutely disgusting. There are people who are ungrateful with what they have, especially the lottery winners. 68% of lottery winners still buy lottery tickets on a weekly basis. Winning the lottery twice would be nice, but there are many reasons why it isn’t right.
The first reason is that lottery winners have enough money. They only have millions of dollars, and some get hundreds of millions of dollars. The greedy fall.
The second reason is that lottery winners should give someone else a chance to win the lottery. There are too many people wasting their money on lottery tickets. I could easily imagine a case where someone wasted $1,000 on lottery tickets, and surprise! That person didn’t get the winning ticket.
Everyone wants to win the lottery, but are the dangers, risks, and selfishness than come along with it really worth it?
Judging A Book By It’s Cover
You’ve heard of the expression, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
However, people commonly judge the book cover when it comes to making a purchase.
The description can be really awesome, but a book cover that doesn’t look good doesn’t sell.
People aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but people do.
There are similar books, and some of them sound the same. The cover is the tie breaker.
The bestselling books tend to have really good covers.
The book with a bad cover doesn’t get sold.
A book with a blurry pictures on the cover won’t get as many sales as a book with a clear picture on the cover.
A book cover with a small title doesn’t get as many sales as the one with the title everyone can see.
People have been told not to judge a book by its cover. However, we are quick to judge many things and many people. Judging has become a part of our nature, and we commonly judge the first impression.
If Mark Sanchez happens to be better than Tom Brady this season (a dream for Jets fans), and he retired that year without winning the Super Bowl, people would judge him from the beginning (there’s a lot of things that can be said).
If someone is consistent, people don’t judge you on your first impression. They judge you on your consistency. Mariano Rivera was a starter for the first year of his career with a 5.51 ERA. Everyone now knows Mariano as the greatest closer in baseball history.
People judge. When people judge your products, what do you want their judgment to be, and how will you get the judgment you want?
Free, Cheap, Normal, Or Expensive
When you set the price for your product, those are the options you have to choose from. You can make your product free, cheap, normal priced, or expensive.
Eliminate normal right away. Normal makes you invisible. Safe makes you invisible. Normal is dangerous. Normal isn’t a standard, it’s mediocrity at best.
You’re down to three options now: free, cheap, or expensive. Expensive doesn’t have to mean $2,000. A $50 book would be considered as expensive. A business card holder worth $20 would be expensive. A rubber band worth $5 would be expensive.
These are the benefits you get from each of the prices:
Free products will get the most clients. If you offer a free video, you will get a lot of sales. If you offer a free book to people at one of your seminars, you would lose money, but from the seminar, the result is going to be a profit. Free products can be used to get subscriptions or promote your paid products.
Cheap products are bought many times because the commitment isn’t a strong one. A book that is only worth $3 is cheap. It’s not a big investment although the content in that book can be incredible. People have considered underpricing themselves to get more sales. It is a common tactic with many possibilities.
Normal products with normal prices don’t make it.
Expensive products scare people at first. There are plenty of less expensive products in the other store. However, if a lot of people are buying an expensive product, the most commission is made per sale. If word goes out that hundreds or even a thousand people bought that product, people will realize others are spending their money to gain access to an expensive product. The expensive product must be more valuable than they ever imagined.
Don’t go in the middle. Charging $6 for an eBook is going in the middle. Charging $25 for a shirt is normal. Don’t be normal. Be different.
Your products can only be free, cheap, or expensive in order to have the biggest impact and make the most sales.
People Forget
Remember that time when you had nothing to do for an entire day and nothing was on your agenda. Probably not.
People are very busy, and since we are all busy, we tend to forget some things. Some things get in the way of business. Less business time means more forgetting. Some entrepreneurs are famous for forgetting.
Every successful blog have one thing in common: they have a boatload of subscribers. In fact, all of their subscribers can’t even fit on a boat. They would need 2 or 3 boats. That’s how many subscribers they have.
Social Media Examiner, Seth Godin’s blog, Jeff Bullas’ blog all have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. They also have over 100,000 followers on Twitter. People don’t forget about blogs like those because they see great content, and subscribing is easy. Social Media Examiner’s subscription box couldn’t be any bigger although that’s an advantage. Social Media Examiner and Jeff Bullas offer free products to anyone who subscribes to their blog.
Seth Godin doesn’t provide a free product to people right when they subscribe to his blog. However, he gives away a lot of freebies which can be found on his official website (not the blog).
People forget. If you want to be remembered, you have to give people a reason to remember you. In order to have a successful blog people will remember, you have to get those subscriptions. Those subscriptions will allow you to email your subscribers automatically when one of your new blog posts comes out.
People forget. Your mission isn’t only to make them remember. Your mission is to make them want to remember.