This Beats Planning EVERY TIME!

Firstly, a ugly confession I need you to know. It has been almost 2 years since the last time I wrote a blog post and on that same note, since I had first drafted the idea for this very blog post.

Ok so imagine this, you’re about to offer a client a “results guaranteed” service… What do you think that would do to your total job numbers? What would it do to your total “sales” numbers… Would clients start banging down your door to choose you over your competitors? 

Of course, before offering a customer a “results guaranteed” service, there’s some requirements and rules you’ll probably want to have in place beforehand. This article will go through how I’m thinking about all this, the impact, the possible pitfalls and of course, the opportunities. All of that in relation to what I’m thinking for my new but YET to be available customer winning program for business owners.

The reason for the long time delay is largely because of this idea itself. It gained momentum and started moving. How did that happen? Well… let me ask you this: 

“What’s more important than talking about the things you’re planning on doing and achieving? It’s actually doing the things.”

In my most recent blog post (which was 18 months ago – but they’ll be posted live about the same time, I wrote them 18 months apart however) I started to share my direction and how I was moving away from “single service” type work. I don’t what the universal term for that is, but to me “single service” work is:

“Anything where a client provides you with a brief of their single stand alone job, you make a quote for it, they award you the job, you deliver the job, you get paid. The job is over.” 

Therefore it’s NOT:

• Pre-determined ongoing work / or “retainer” work as it’s often called.
• It’s not a recurring month after month renewing / or likely to renew task or agreement. 

In other words, it’s the type of work that is best to move away from IF possible (maybe your industry doesn’t allow for recurring or ongoing services of products, but there’s often a way, Keep reading). 

How Did I Get Roped Back In?

If you’re reading this blog post after just having read the last one then you will know exactly how I feel about this. Well, you’ll know my polite professional version anyway. I won’t go back into it in full detail now, if you don’t know or if you need a refresh (which is encouraged at least once a month as it is such an alluring and life damaging trap) go back and read the previous blog posts titled: 

1. “Why I Do It and How I Do It”. And:

2. “Change of Plans” 

I too need to read those once a month to keep me on track, otherwise I’ll end up in outer space when I was actually headed straight for the bank. Literally.

For a quick top up read the following, but slow down and let every word sink into your brain like water into a dry sponge:

“Being stuck and completing single jobs, for different clients every time, is the business owner’s version of the hamster wheel”. 

“But I’m my own boss!”.

Here’s what I mean:

• You will get one job
• You’ll complete it. 
• You’ll get paid. 
• You’ll look for the next one and do the same. 
• Every job requires another sales process, finding new clients. 
• Yes, sometimes you’ll get lucky with a 2nd job from the same client or a referral.
• Sometimes you might get 2 jobs at once. 
• But eventually, the wheel stops spinning on its own and you have to jump back on and pedal to earn.

It’s Called Momentum For A Reason

About 18 months ago this all started to move along for me, the wheels started spinning. If I’m being totally honest it started 18-19 years ago. I heard this same concept and was encouraged to follow it 17 years ago. 

I first got interested in “being my own boss” when the “earn money online” hype rolled into town. I’m positive that happened at different times for different people, luckily for me it was November in 2004, approx. That was 19 years and 3 months ago at the time I’m first drafting this blog post for you. 

18 months ago however I started to get serious about it again after several false starts and short term success using the same principle over the years.  

I was actively looking for the industry to move into where I could build something I had called “The Customer Mountain” (which I’ll dive into and share more on at a different time). In short, it was to move into an industry build a marketing system process that would:

1. Attract
2. Capture
3. Convert. And
4. Process customers for businesses in that industry.

A complete marketing machine to put it another way, a mountain of customers within an industry or a niche to relate it back to the name i’ve given it; The Customer Mountain.

Imagine having a big warehouse where as a business owner you could reverse a truck up to, press a button and new clients filed into the back of your truck. You drive off to your premises with your new customers. That’s the model. 

Now to frame it in the way I’ll be talking about it: Imagine having a big mountain of interested customers that you can pull from each day/each week/as needed. Not just any big mountain of people, a big mountain of people who you already know are interested in what you sell because you’re the one that put the people together there in that mountain to begin with. 

The Surprise Industry

After finding myself in full business hamster mode; completing any job for any client that came along (close enough anyway). I looked up, realised I was the hamster again, felt pretty silly and was looking again to move away from single jobs and build something bigger again. 

I had jobs coming my way and I was out putting proposals on jobs, etc, when a surprising business got connected with me. 

It was the owner of a Karate school. It would be the first time I’d ever completed ANY marketing work in the martial arts industry. The owner asked me:

 “Can you help me get more members because I feel like I’ve tried everything, but got nowhere. My member numbers are slowly decreasing and I’m thinking about giving it one more attempt, otherwise I’ll close it down.”

You could say luckily I was on the hamster wheel to get this proposal thrown at me. You could say it was fate, i’ll just say it’s a good idea to be aware of where you are, what’s really happening around you, what actually IS the reality… and dedicate 10% of your brain to watch out for the next opportunity you can jump on to carry yourself out. Like Gandalf on the eagle if you’ve watched Lord of The Rings (I read the books in highschool because my girlfriend said they were cool). 

When I was asked that question from the Karate school owner (“can you help?”) I said “yes, I’m sure I can.” I didn’t know how at the time exactly, because I didn’t know the industry. Somewhere half to three-quarters of the way through my 19 years learning and practicing marketing, I understood deeply that:

“Marketing is marketing and what marketing IS, can be applied to any industry.” 

The story of what happened next, the marketing system I built for this karate school and the 25+ martial art schools that have benefited from it since… will need to wait for another day. 

That is however the short version of why it’s been about a year and half since blog posts. It’s been 18 months because I was focusing on the DOING rather than talking about the doing. 

Documenting The Journey

Throughout the weeks and 18 months I always kept notes. I have a Google spreadsheet of milestones, thoughts, lessons and realistions, they are all ready to be turned into a detailed blog post, like this. 

It was Russell Brunson who I first heard talking about “document the journey”, which means as a business owner if you want to share your ideas, thoughts and lessons with a wider audience the best way to do that is by documenting the journey. Russell Brunson was talking about how he learned that from Gary Vaynerchuck. If you don’t know who either of those people are it doesn’t matter, just know the idea itself isn’t something I created. 

My plan has always been to share the journey I’ve been on, and the journey which I’m currently on. For people starting up their own business, I hope they can avoid most of the tough years by making better turns along the way – learn from my mistakes on my journey.

For people already in business, I hope it can get them out of a tough year if they’re in one or if they just want to systematically grow without shooting themself in the foot 43 times as they take steps (because that’s what I did).

Doing WINS Against Planning

I was looking out for an industry I could go deep into and provide a guaranteed service. I literally went to google and searched: “list of different industries in Australia” to remind myself of what different businesses and companies are out there. 

That was all while I was doing one off jobs for one off clients. Therefore, I didn’t get very far with that search and nor did I have the headspace to consider it properly. I was overworking for underpaying jobs most of the time. Can you relate to that?

Luckily the first martial art school came across my desk/ or my computer screen we should say now in 2024 and I jumped in and started DOING. 

My questions for myself when preparing to go deep into one industry were: 

1. How could I figure out the marketing system for this client? 

2. Could that work for all clients in this industry?

3. How could I build a bit of a machine here to operate it? 

I was doing, which helped a lot. 

I’ve spent months planning and designing, and writing books and manuals that never had the impact. I put that down to me doing too much planning, without me being particular about the type of person or the type of business I wanted to work with.

I’ve made the courses and sold the courses but I would have taken them further if I spent less time planning and all that time doing, helping, building a list of “followers” / “leads” / “a group
/ “a customer mountain” first. Does that make sense?

Do the thing and the plan will unfold in front of you. Atleast, it did for me. Hopefully it does for you too. 

This blog post was meant to be something totally different. I wanted to focus on how I was choosing the client more and the different choices I had. It seems I got side tracked with other trains of thought while writing this blog post, however, as I went down the track I had to get it out of my head and put it on paper. I hope that at least, something clicked for you here and you’re now one single step ahead of where you would have been otherwise.

For me, having the thoughts and ideas swirling around in my head alone, ends with me forgetting them. Have you ever had a very strong, clarifying thought… an idea or a realisation of that “UH-HUH!” moment… You think to yourself: “I hope I remember this, I should write this down..” and then the next day you think…. “There was something I wanted to remember yesterday.”

If you can relate to this, you’re not alone. I do the same thing. That’s why I started to write down some thoughts and ideas into a Google sheet and then expand on them here (I highly recommend Google Drive, Google Sheets and Google Documents – that’s a whole different story I won’t get into now).

I hope this has been useful. The bottom line of this is that:

1. When I used to plan and plan and prepare alone without involving the business owners I was trying to help, I didn’t get very far. 
2. When I went deep into one industry and built the solution with them, I now have a service which I can guarantee and have rolled out to 26+ businesses in the exact same niche. 

That’s how it worked for me, maybe that could help you also. 

Stop planning, start doing. 

The next blog post I will circle back to choosing the right client and the different choices I had. 

The good news for now is that the framework for the Customer Mountain I mentioned before is something I have already written out. If you want a free copy of that I have made it available for free at https://craigmarty.com . The Customer Mountain is my map for attracting and winning more and more customers for any product or service. 

If you’d like a free copy of the map, just go to the homepage on www.craigmarty.com and you enter your email address for it to be emailed to you for free.