If all you ever do

Old Texan saying, “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”

I have been thinking about it a lot since the recession started. I am a small business owner and almost all of my business friends come from the small business community all over the USA. I speak at conferences all the time and I attend several conferences every year – some to learn and some to just network and build strategic contacts. So you can say I am pretty ‘social’ the offline type of guy.

Over the last couple of years when the money was flowing easy and customers were buying everything in sight (TIME magazine had an article on about the $40,000 grilling ‘system’ and a $70,000 bathroom ‘updates’ only three years ago) – a lot of my friends felt that there was no need to try anything new in their marketing. After all if customers kept walking in and spending money then why bother with the admittedly ‘boring’ task of building a customer list, stay in touch with past customers, write copy that connects and sells or even try anything new online or offline?

I lost count on how many times we had such discussions late night after a conference where a lot of excellent ideas were dismissed on being ‘who has time to do all that?’ and when folks got back home, they went the path of renewing their Yellow Pages ad or writing yet another big check to their local radio station.

Those days are over for most and not coming back anytime soon.

Dan Kennedy at the last Super Conference challenged the 1000 in attendance to look hard and see what holes the current recession has shown them in their business.

One of the biggest objection I hear about testing Birthday Marketing or New Mover Marketing programs (two marketing programs we are run successfully for hundreds of restaurants, auto repair shops, dentists, chiropractors and salons all over USA) is “well I tried it 20 years ago and it did not work at that time.”

To that I say, “So What?”. Try it again because if you are not continuously testing new marketing strategies in your business, not thinking of different ways to make your customers happy so they will spread the word about what you do (Facebook Pages / Twitter / referrals), and not disciplining yourself to put at least 3 hours every week learning on what is coming your way.

I find it hard to believe that anybody will see big jumps in new sales or profits by doing the same especially what is no longer working the way it used to (hey anybody remembers newspaper advertising?)

New money requires boldness. New money requires new actions. Not doing more and more of what used to work back in the days.