Buying courses, plugins, themes and stuff that you THINK will magically turn into more money.
Every day your business is subject to time wasting, ineffective tools and having to do manual tasks yourself. For example, learning how to build a landing page can take days, even weeks.
Building that landing page and connecting it to the rest of your website and marketing plan is another HUGE task. Finally, when you decide to roll out this process to your customers, it takes even more time.
This happens with social media, WordPress updates, marketing strategy. Everything between book-keeping to security updates requires time and investment.
So to combat all these situations, you’ll see plugins, courses, themes, apps and software that solve those problems. You’ll see themes that can build landing pages. Software that posts your social posts for you. Courses that will teach you how to convert leads into sales.
These solutions are the biggest threat to your business. How? Becuase you have to invest in them TWICE before they start to pay off.
But I bought it…
How often has this happened to you? You see a theme or a plugin that promises to solve a problem that you’ve got. Landing page builder, easier CMS, fancy animations. Whatever.
You pick up the theme and 6 months later – you’ve never used it.
Courses are even worse
There’s an old proverb that says:
“You invest in education twice. First to buy the materials, then to invest the time to learn the material”
Full disclosure, that isn’t a proverb. I made that up because I couldn’t think of another way of explaining my point.
What happens is we see the benefits that a course can offer and by buying it, we’re already proactively working the result. It’s a bit like people (usually ‘wantrepreneurs’) who talk about starting a business and all these great ideas they’ve got, but they’re not willing to sit down and do the work.
Buying products, courses and apps tricks us into being productive and by spending money, we expect a return. Usually a result or more money in return.
F.O.M.O
Fear of missing out. Don’t fall for it. I use it on my emails and it works. “If you don’t buy this, you’ll miss out”. The truth is that you probably won’t. Very rarely do products only have a once in a lifetime benefit. It plays on the natural ‘hoarder’ instinct that means if we collect resources then we’ll be better off.
Ask yourself, of all the themes, courses, plugins and applications – how many are you REALLY using?
Also, just because 10000 people are using it, doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Besides, this isn’t about whether a product works or not. It’s about buying something and USING it. Committing to the purchase and knowing that buying something isn’t the end of your problem, it’s the start of your solution.
So how do I make sure my purchases pay off?
It’s simple really, you need to commit to whatever you’ve bought and ring it until it’s dry. Squeeze every cent and penny from your purchases until they’re easy to use, memorised AND you’ve honestly exhausted the capabilities of that resource.
The common journey that people take is that they believe something new or a change is what their business needs.
“Well maybe if I start using this plugin to create my landing pages I’ll build more?”
“My mates have all said I need to use Active Campaign over MailChimp, then I’ll start sending more emails”
“What I need to do is THIS blogging course instead of that other one, then I’ll start writing more”
The truth is that commitment and drive and consistency is what your business needs. Your business doesn’t need ANOTHER plugin or ANOTHER application. What you need is to commit to one course, or one method of doing things and see what results you get.
But what if it’s not working?
Look I’m not psychic, despite what I’d tell girls when I try to pick them up in bars (that’s a joke). You need to try methods and apps and see what you get on with, but every time you want to buy another product, ask yourself 1) have I tried to fix this problem before and 2) did I honestly give that a good try?
When you pick up a new product, the easy part is buying it and the hard part is sitting down and committing to learning a new process.
In summary, don’t stress out that you need the latest shiny thing. Our industry is AWFUL for shouting about the latest process, plugin or application. Chances are it’s not going to make or break your business. My advice is pick a path and stick to it.
From the wise mouth of our greatest ninja
Am I talking crazy talk? Should you buy every new thing that comes out OR are you better off picking a product and mastering it? Let me know in the comments below.
