Detour Ahead

All right. How's it going? 

I'm Dave, coming to you from the mobile command post, and I'm using this filter on the video thing. This is supposed to be the Millennium Falcon. I thought it was cool 'cause I'm in the truck, and I got this really dark background. I was going to shoot here with that, but this is pretty neat. 

Anyway, it's getting late at night here because I had to head on over to Salt Lake City, which is where I am now. Well, I had some bad weather on the way here, so it took me a little bit longer than normal. 

I'm telling you it's a real drag driving on the snow, but it is fun playing with this video.

So how do you relate that to marketing? 

Well, trying new things. That's one. But as far as the snow and the weather conditions go, that's one of the things as a trucker that I run into constantly. Construction, detours, weather, plows, accidents... all these things. 

They can slow me down or make me have to take a different way. 

And it's a great metaphor for your business because there's always something going on. You never know what it's going to be and at any given moment, your schedule or your plans can change, and you must adapt to move ahead. 

It's the same thing as your business. 

Now. Where this becomes a hassle is when you decide to try a different way too soon. In other words, you don't put enough effort into the direction you're headed. The tool you're using, the platform, the paid advertising, whatever it is, everybody seems to have a tendency to not put enough effort in.

It’s… as a culture, we seem to be always looking for something that's happening right away, and I spoke about this in a different video where you've been trained to fail. Because ‘They’, from kindergarten or first grade on, they’re teaching you. There's an answer to every question they have. If you give the right answer, then you move ahead, you get rewarded. And if you give any other answer, that of course is wrong, and you fail. 

That's not how business works and it's not how life works. 

You've got to continually try different things. And whatever's working now might not work next week. 

It all depends on your specific market. The people you are specifically talking to within that market. It’s... at first it's difficult to understand, because you want to put everything out to where everyone would love this... but honestly, even if a very large number of people are interested in what you are doing, you're going to want to find a way to niche that down so you're dealing with a smaller segment, because that's specialization.

That intimate knowledge of that smaller group is what's going to allow you to communicate with them so much more effectively because you're one of them. 

You’re the man. You know what's up, and you know what to tell them, and your advice is good because you speak their language.

 And you feel like one of them. And you actually will be, because you know that smaller section. Rather than trying to deal with everybody on a larger scale. 

It even might be men vs women. Something as simple as that. 

But anyway, you're much better off if you specialize. 

You don’t want to get too specialized. Maybe, but as a general rule, the more you know, and the deeper you go into the market segment, the more effective you’re communicating with them, the more they're going to love your stuff. 

That's what gets them to buy. 

Take this detour around frustration and failure in online marketing.

I will talk to you tomorrow. I'm out.