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NB: This newsletter is published every Monday. Point your browser to www.tayosolagbade.com/sdnuggets to read at least ONE new post added to my SD Nuggets blog on a different category from Tuesday till Saturday (sometimes even Sundays) in line with this publishing schedule 
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IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS newsletter is published online on the “reincarnated” version of my Self-Development (SD) Nuggets blog. I continue to put finishing touches to the content. If you encounter ANY bad/dead links, and you can spare the time, email it to me via tayo at tksola dot com. Thanks in advance
No. 155: To Excel, Avoid Rigid Routine & Focus on GETTING RESULTS THAT WORK!
Last Friday (15th August 2014) a.m., at Mr. Biggs’ Maryland outlet in Lagos-Nigeria, I met – for the FIRST time ever in 2 years – with Enuenwemba Chukuyenum (Chuks) – a past buyer of my Ration Formulator app.
We shook hands, hugged, then held each other like old friends (see photo below), while my 15 year old son (who accompanied me as part of coaching I’m giving him) took a photo of us!
The Internet Is an Amazing Resource that Eliminates Boundaries
For those who have followed me online for a while, you most likely know I’ve come a long way since January 2002, when I left Guinness Nigeria to become self-employed.
And especially since July 2005, when, while on a 2 week exploratory business trip to Accra-Ghana, I commenced using article marketing on a formal basis to promote my products and services to a global audience.
Since then, I have developed my own brand of online marketing, which I call a “Web Marketing System” (WMS). And it has been instrumental to my ability to achieve increasing “marketing” visibility – leading to enquiries/sale to buyers within and outside Africa.
That WMS was what led Chuks (who provides high profile extension support to farm CEOs) to discover – via search engine results pages – the Farm Business Support solutions I offer.
We agreed to meet on that day, to discuss further about potential benefits of my Poultry Farm Manager software (watch 16 videos here), and a FREE talk I offer Farm CEO groups, titled “3 Zero Cost Strategies to Attract Profitable Buyers for Your Farm Products!”
Isn’t it amazing how we’ve arrived at this serious level of formal business relationship, based ONLY on the use of my Web Marketing System?!
To Market Unique Solutions, Traditional Marketing Techniques May Not Work for You
To get where I am today, I learnt the hard way that promoting the unique range of products and services I offer rarely works via traditional channels.
In marketing software development and freelance writing solutions (like I do) even those who can afford to use them rarely reap profitable returns on their investment in TV, Radio, and Print media.
I quickly learnt the hard way, when I exhausted my limited funds placing ads in newspapers as a start-up.
The desire to do better however drove me to painstakingly test a huge variety of alternative channels.
Until I discovered I needed to develop the skills to leverage the web as a primary low cost business marketing tool.
Today, over 90% of my sales leads come via e-mail, face book, website contact forms, newsletter subscriber referrals etc.
Most of those who reach out to me in this manner often tell me they discovered me via Google. Especially through my articles or PDF reports, books and especially my SD Nuggets blog and You tube video channel (which hosts tutorial/demonstrations for some of my popular Excel-VB driven software products).
It Is NOT Easy to Succeed Using Unconventional Methods, But When Done Right, They Yield Profitable and Lasting Results
Now, I must say that even though the results today appear to be coming rapidly, it was NOT like that in the early days when I started out.
It has taken me lots of diligent and intelligent hard work.
To achieve similar results, you must be willing to work hard as well, and to also explore UNIQUE ways to apply your creativity.
Marketing is ultimately about creating positive perceptions in the minds of your target audience, to make them believe YOU can help THEM.
It does not really matter what you do or how you do it (so long as you’re ethical).
The RESULTS you get, especially in terms of the desired reaction you successfully elicit from your buyers, is what really matters.
The interesting thing is that most of what you need to do will rarely have been taught to you before you leave school!!
Below I use the true stories of 2 well known achievers to illustrate my meaning…
1. Breaking the Rules to Succeed in Business (The James Brown Example)
Over the weekend I (along with my kids) watched the movie about the life of James Brown: the Godfather of Soul.
In one scene, a member of his band who played the guitar questioned Mr. Brown’s instruction that they all play their instruments at the same time – like “drums”. He noted that some instruments, based on what he learnt in music school had to be played to “follow” some other instruments.
James Brown looked at him and said “How many hit songs do you have son?”
The silence from the guy gave the answer everybody already knew: NONE.
Then Brown turned round and asked the rest of the band “Does it sound good?”(in reference to the unconventional playing of instruments he made them adopt).
They said “YES!”
And based on that he said they would play it the way he’d told them to.
We all know James Brown’s music influenced the evolution of MANY great musicians – including Michael Jackson, and our own Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
That’s proof that his approach produced the desired results, making others choose to LEARN from him!
2. Breaking the Rules to Succeed in Business (The Henry Ford Example)
The lesson I learned from watching the above mentioned move is the same as what one can easily take away from the story of Henry Ford, about the time when a group of journalists tried to use questions to make him look stupid.
As I read it, they argued that Ford being an illiterate was really not responsible for the success of Ford Motors. That he actually knew nothing and was in essence ignorant. And they believed it was the trained and educated engineers he employed who made him successful.
Each time they asked him questions relating to technical aspects of automobile manufacturing, Ford simply called in one of his employees who he knew was competent in that area, and asked him to answer the journalists.
Eventually, he told them he did not need to know such details about what it took to make the cars.
Instead what was important was for him to know how to find those who knew what was needed to get the different aspects done correctly, and then to organize them to work together to achieve that goal.
It was an answer that proved Ford to be a man of real education. One who knew that knowledge applied to productive ends matter more than abstract knowledge
James Brown – like Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison – had little or no formal exposure to classroom education.
Yet, each of these men succeeded by tapping deep into his/her creative God-given talents, and using it to supervise and organized formally schooled others, to achieve challenging goals they fearlessly set for themselves.
Each man demonstrated an impressive capacity for developing successful models that enabled them “sell” their products and services successfully.
For instance, the James Brown movie revealed how he readily challenged the “promoter” who marketed his records and shows.
At a point, rather than “stick with making music” and leaving the business to the promoter, he literally took over the promotion of his music, by (as he loved to say) “flipping it” – injecting his own money – to achieve unprecedented street smart marketing success in selling his music/shows.
Anyone Can Succeed Using Unconventional Business Methods
That’s a FACT. So, this is not something you have to go and enroll for some new course or workshop to learn.
Just be willing to search for useful information of low to zero costs strategies for marketing products/services on and off the web.
Then read and creatively put what you learn to use.
Develop the habit of testing what you try out in as many different ways as possible – until you find something that works. Then tweak that until you get it working optimally. Once that is done, find a way to replicate and reuse it again an again.
This is what I did, and still do today, to succeed.
I learnt to do so, by studying many others and creatively adapting what I learnt they did, to suit my purposes.
No matter how much success comes, however, one must NEVER feel s/he knows it all. It’s always a constant learning process!
Final Words: Ignore Rigid Routine & Focus Instead on GETTING RESULTS THAT WORK!
To end, I recommend that you avoid wasting valuable time trying to rigidly follow rules set by others.
For instance, some people say you must “get enough capital” before you start out.
The truth is however that so many people have achieved business greatness by building their wealth from the ground up. Most started out having absolutely nothing, except their desires!
Look back in history, and you will see that rules rarely remain determine success into the future.
You have a God-given ability to “sense” what will work for you. IF you immerse and diligently apply yourself in pursuit of your valued goal, that ability will become finely developed – or honed – over time.
By the above, I refer mainly to your intuition..or your sixth sense.
You were born with it. But you must DEVELOP it until it becomes a reliable “weapon” for use in narrowing down to solutions that will work for you.
So, if you “feel” the urge to change the ways things are done, to suit YOUR need to achieve, do NOT hesitate to do so.
Worst thing that can happen is you’ll fail – and that would only be temporary defeat. A few checks on where you went wrong and you’ll soon be able to try again, and again, and again, UNTIL you get it right.
Dan Kennedy, a revered expert in business marketing wrote a book titled “How to succeed in Business by breaking all the rules”.
The contents of that wonderful book further reinforce the points I’ve made above. You would do well to get a copy and read it from cover to cover.
For now, on the thorny issue of finding capital (to promote your products and services for instance)…
Below: Screenshot of some wise quotes – about capital/funding – from Dan Kennedy, that guided me to develop unconventional business marketing strategies responsible for a lot of success I record today:
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Have a great week :-))
