Have you ever stuck at a new business idea for so long it became part of your daily routine?

It became part of your everyday life.

But it never became a Million Pound Enterprise.

There's two things that stopped it from being that.

You forgot the REASON as to why you're still trying with it.

And because you're blind from Sunk Cost Fallacy.

They are both as dangerous as each other and if you don't remove them quick.

You'll waste months maybe even YEARS of your time.

So, you had a great plan, had all the resources needed to start, everything was great.

And everyday you keep putting more and more time in to it.

Planning and planning and planning and researching and researching.

BUT...

No clients, no customers, no MONEY.

Nothing.

You keep going and going, getting slower and slower.

Until one day someone asks you.

"What's your goal with this business?"

"erm, er, errr, hm"

"I haven't really thought about that."

What has happened is you've got lost in the sauce.

Lost in the process.

You have forgotten that with process comes results.

Maybe tiny results. Maybe £1 in the first month.

But results are results.

and if you forget about the results and why you're spending hours a day on this.

The results will never come.

And you will just get lazier and lazier until you give up.

So, to round this off.

Keep your goals fresh in your mind.

Do a self diagnostic daily.

Why am I doing this?

Why am I not doing that?

Where can I improve?

And the chance of failing is precisely zero.

-Josh

P.S. Will get into Sunk Cost Fallacy next.

P.P.S. Stay tuned

Ever started up a business and had the PERFECT product.

Everything was great, product is one in a million.

There was ZERO chance of it ever failing.

BUUUUT.

You just couldn't sell it.

You got 1 like on Instagram and it was from your mum.

After 2 weeks, you give up.

Do you now understand WHY?

Why it never sold?

There are three words that will NEVER let that happen again.

U

S

P

Unique. Selling. Proposition.

Remember Dominoes pizza - "If we don't deliver in less than 20 minutes, you don't pay"

Unique right? Who else has done that.

NOBODY!

So, your business needs a USP that will interest people that weren't even interested.

Get in touch if you need help with this.

But remember there must be something in it for the customer.

or they won't stop and read.

-Josh

Do you ever catch yourself scrolling aimlessly?

Then you turn it off randomly and get back to your life?

The main reason you caught yourself scrolling and stopped is because...

whatever was put in front of you was hard to digest.

Your brain looked at it and said "nah. I'm good."

It does this when too much brain calories are used.

It's the same thing with ads right.

You stop and read.

If it's something you're interested in you may even buy it right?

So, making ads that are paragraphs long will not do well.

Stick to a photo or two and a few words.

Remember, these people are looking for your services.

All you must do is stand out, make it easy to digest, and have a USP.

If you don't know what a USP is, stick around I will get in to this soon.

-Josh

Ever wondered how there is 18-year-old millionaires?

Well they may have got lucky.

Or have rich parents.

BUT.

There is a very small group of them kids that have filtered every single thing they do.

They have analysed, questioned, and removed every single non-beneficial task they do.

There is things out there that can't be removed, but majority of them can be.

You just haven't.

OR

Don't want to.

Do you understand that every rich person has analysed every move they make and chosen to keep it or remove it.

You can do the same today.

Let's see how long it takes for you to scale that business.

-Joshua

When it comes to your life and your work.

A lot of people get the two conflated but it is very simple.

Your work IS your life.

I am sure you have worked whilst living.

Right?

You can live AND work.

So when it comes to prioritising a certain thing.

First you must understand WHY.

WHY are you prioritising this thing?

If you struggle to answer this.

Do not prioritise it!

This isn't only to become successful as possible.

It is to solve ANY issue that comes your way in life.

Relationship, business, social, ANYTHING.

Do you know how?

Because when your priorities are straight.

Your mind is straight. Your thinking is straight. Your solutions are straight.

-Joshua

Ever heard of a 'false dichotomy'?

A false dichotomy is a logical fallacy. Someone pretends like there's two options while that's not the case in actual reality.

You'll recognise these:

"You're either with us or against us."

"If you're not a vegan you hate animals"

"I'd rather be healthy than rich"

You can see that these are all objectively wrong. Pretending you have to choose between two alternatives.

I'll add one more to the list:

"Work-life balance"

What are we even saying here?

Are you not alive while you're at work? Does your life stop when your work ends? Does your life end when your work starts?

We're both business owners. I don't know about you but some of my best ideas came to me while going for a walk. Spending time with my family. Watching a movie.

I know that my work-life balance isn't disturbed and I know that I'm not doing life wrong.

Work is a part of life. ESPECIALLY for business owners like you and I. It never really stops. One bleeds into the other and that's great.

Don't let anyone talk you into thinking this is weird or wrong.

-Joshua

You must learn how to work with speed AND quality.

Speed is great, not so great alone.

Quality is awesome, not if it takes 17 years.

It's just like that saying — "Quality over quantity"

But.

What if we can get "quality and quantity".

We trick ourselves in to believing it's either done quick and god awful.

Or.

We do a really good job but it takes a few short centuries.

Wouldn't it be great if we can do a great job with SPEED?

Of course it would, imagine all that spare time.

This is how I combine speed with quality —

It has been proven to work abouuuut, EVERYTIME.

Close your other tabs, turn off your phone, lock your door.

Focus one hundred percent of your mind upon ONE task.

After you have done that.

Come back to this message and tell me how right I am.

Speak soon.

P.S. If you run a business and you're doing well but you want to do even better? We might be a good fit. I will help you set up your marketing and crush it in the online and offline space.

If that sounds good, fill our contact form in and I will send you some details on the process of us working together.

No cost, no obligation. Won't even ask you for a kidney or your firstborn child.

You need to start doing less.

You'll get way more done. By doing less.

Allow me to explain.

Running a business is overwhelming. We are the ones responsible for everything, so we need to oversee EVERYTHING.

And everything? That's a lot!

Gets frustrating. Stressful. Annoying. Vexing.

Now, let's be real with each other: I kinda like stress.

If I hated stress I would have taken a simple government job. Or be a middle manager somewhere. Hop on endless Zoom meetings every day. Play office politics. Pretend I'm an invaluable part of the company without actually getting any meaningful work done ever.

But that sounds like torture to people like you and me. We want to get things done.

And if you want to get MORE done... you need to start doing LESS.

You're most productive when you're right at the edge of being in control. You know the feeling. Things are moving fast, a lot is going on... but you can still keep up.

Go over the edge and things start getting out of control quickly. You know what that feels like as well.

As soon as you find yourself in that position you need to look at your todo list and figure out what you can STOP doing.

Maybe you need to focus on one platform only and crush it on there instead of halfheartedly doing every single social media platform?

Maybe you need to zoom in on the weakest part of your funnel instead of trying to fix everything at once?

Maybe you need to focus on selling just the most profitable products or services instead of trying to sell everything to everyone?

It's different for everyone. But every client we've worked with had things on their list they needed to STOP doing.

So start doing less. It will allow you to do a few things very very well.

Feels weird but it works.

P.S. If you run a business and you're doing well but you want to do even better? We might be a good fit. I will help you set up your marketing and crush it in the online and offline space.

If that sounds good, fill our contact form in and I send you some details on the process of us working together.

No cost, no obligation. Won't even ask you for a kidney or your firstborn child.

Crafting an RSO

The number 1 thing you can do to make marketing for your business pay off is: craft an RSO. A Rock Solid Offer.

Here's how:

The Deadliest Mistake When Crafting An Offer

Let's say we run a marketing agency and we need to come up with a good offer to attract clients.

Most business owners will come up with something like:

'Call us today for excellent customer service and competitive pricing'

or

'We've been in business for 15 years and we're experts in our field'

or

'We can handle your ads for you and we have done this for 100+ other customers'

Look around you and you'll see this type of marketing EVERYWHERE.

Here's the major problem with it:

It's B-O-R-I-N-G.

Generic. Doesn't stand out. Doesn't get your prospect's blood running hot. Doesn't even register when your ideal client scans headlines.

How do I know?

Because the competition can say the exact same thing.

The First Element Of Your RSO

When I tell people that 'being boring' is a big marketing problem they usually start thinking about ways to make their stuff outrageous.

Lasershows, blinking lights, airhorn noises, confetti, maybe also throw a flamethrower in there for good measure.

That's not what I mean.

Oil changes are very boring to me. But if my car is telling me that it's almost time to get my oil changed? All of a sudden it shoots to the top of my list of things that are interesting.

I start looking for oil changes and what do I see?

'Changing your oil is important and good for the engine'

'£150 oil change. Book here'

'Protect your engine, change your oil today'

All of that stuff doesn't cut it. Because it doesn't step in to MY world. The world of your customer.

And you know what my main question is about this oil change thing?

"How long is this going to take?".

So if you want to make it interesting for me you come up with something like:

'Book your 15 minute oil change online. Fixed in no-time flat'

That's a great start for an offer. It's not an RSO yet, but at least we're making progress.

You don't fix 'the boring problem' by being outrageous.

You fix 'the boring problem' by thinking about your customer, stepping into his world, entering the conversation going on in his mind.

That's only one element though. A great RSO usually has three, so we still have two more to go.

We'll talk about those in the next article in this series.

Talk soon,

Joshua

P.S. Want to see a solid RSO example in the meantime?

Get in touch with our agency today. If we're a good fit I will personally take a look at your company and your marketing, come up with a strategy of what I'd do differently and discuss it with you in depth on a call. No cost, no obligation. If you want to work together I'll tell you exactly how that works, if you don't want to work together that's fine too. No hard selling, no pressure, no annoying sales tactics.

Sounds good? Then fill out this form.

If you're looking for a way to make your ads more effective, capture more attention and get you more clients… this article will show you exactly that.

I vividly remember writing my first ad. I hated every second of it.

I analysed the biggest and most successful companies in the world. But when I tried to use that knowledge to write an ad for our local business… I had no idea how to do it!

Looking at that blank page I realised I was in over my head. And the longer I sat there, the more stupid I felt.

The Secret Reason Why Most Ads Don't Perform

So I did some research to find the formula.

Some sources told me to use a cute baby animal in my ad. Others said that wasn't professional.

Some sources told me to repeat my message again and again. Others said repetition annoys people and makes them NOT buy from you.

With the deadline rapidly approaching I took a shortcut. I looked at the ads of our competitors and did roughly the same. Like copying your classmate's homework and changing it up slightly so it's not an exact copy.

I showed it to everyone, they said it was OK and I ran the ad.

A few days go by and I don't hear anything about the results. So I asked some of my fellow business owners where the ad results were. They seemed slightly confused by the question:

"Uhhh… what do you mean 'results'?"

"The results from the ad I ran. Will I make any sales from it? Will many people call in?" I asked.

They smiled, leaned back and said:

"Nooooo, Joshua. That's not how ads work! The ad is for brand name recognition. Top of mind awareness. It's all about branding, you know?"

I played it cool and said: "Sure, I understand".

That was a lie. Because I didn't understand at all how those things got me more sales.

And now, I'll let you in on a little secret: I was lying to them. But they was also lying to me.

Because they had no idea what they was talking about.

Fixing Your Marketing

When we spend money on something we measure the result.

Doesn't matter if we're spending money on equipment, lunch or vendors - we make sure that we get what we pay for, right?

When I started my own business I tried to do the same with marketing. Instead of results I got wordsalad.

'Well, this ad is for brand name recognition'

'We're focused on top of mind awareness in our market'

'This campaign is set up to solidify our branding and brand positioning'

This is usually said in a slightly condescending tone designed to make you feel dumb for even asking the question.

Here's the ugly truth:

"Most businesses throw away at least half of their marketing budget. Maybe even more than half."

And that just didn't sit right with me

How I Stopped Throwing Money Away…

…And How You Can Do The Same

I decided to get to the bottom of this and figure out the formula for effective marketing.

The good news? There was a formula and I figured it out.

The bad news? It took years and years of study, puzzling pieces together, testing it and using trial and error to figure out what actually worked.

If I had to write out all the elements of the formula we would be sitting here for weeks, so let me give you one of the best shortcuts I found.

Some might recognise it as 'Pearson's Law'.

"What is measured, improves."

Want to immediately and dramatically increase ad results?

Make them measurable by adding a response mechanism. A call to action in every ad that asks the prospect to do something.

And then you monitor that action like a hawk.

Now you can measure. Test. Figure out what works and what doesn't.

One of the first things I do when I start working with a client is implement this simple rule:

"Every ad we run needs to be measurable, no exceptions."

No more jargon. No more vague marketing gobbledygook. Measurable, tangible, solid results.

There's plenty of ways to do this and it's doable for every single business, yours included. If you want to know how we would do this in your business, get in touch with us today.