Do you like to learn from the mistakes of others so you don’t have to make them yourself?  

If so, reading this post could be a treat for you.

In addition to toys, family, chocolate, Christmas trees & Santa Clause, I’ve taken a bit of time these last few weeks of the year to reflect on where I’ve been, what I’ve done and how I’ve done it.

I’ve done some pretty heavy review (and cleansing) of things i’ve done to market my business.  I went through over 500 youtube videos, and 400 blog posts.

This has included deleting well over 50% of the content I had out there.

Crazy?  Maybe.  Maybe not. 

Let me share with you you my top 12 Home Business Marketing Lessons and you can be the judge.

Lesson 1: Fill your content with value, not pitch.

The #1 reason I deleted so much content was the fact that so much of it was valueless pitch.  (sorry if you were on the receiving end of that.) 

Funny thing is, I thought I already knew this lesson, and still somehow – fell into the trap.

When your passionate about something, it’s really easy to become an evangelist for it.

If you’re trying to attract and serve people who are not already evangelists for what you’re selling, say home business owners who happen to be marketing another product or business at the moment, you have to be an evangelist for the the things they want to be preached to about.

The moment you find yourself talking too much about your product, service or business opportunity is the moment you run the risk of losing your audience.

1 simple way to know if this is happening is to look at your engagement.

If the only people who are commenting on your content, are in your company, this is a good clue that you’re not reaching the broader market of home business owners that you want to attract and serve.

Lesson 2:  Stay generic in the marketing you want to stay out there on the internet.

This relates to lesson #1 but it’s worth touching upon here as well.

After 12 years of working from home, here’s one big lesson that seems to keep popping up again and again.

Companies change, people change and philosophies change over time.

This means that the company you’re in love with right not, may not be the company you’re in love with 5 or 10 years from now.

If you’re putting blog posts and videos up that you want to represent you for the long haul, make sure that content is promoting you, your brand, your value, your ideals, etc.

You can always offer your company once someone becomes a lead.

Your auto responder messages are easier to change than blog posts and youtube videos.

Lesson 3: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

I remember when I first got on the internet.  The goal was to get leads and sales as fast as possible because I needed money.

This led to an approach that was hurried and sloppy.

The goal was to get as many pieces of content out, with as many keywords as possible so there would be more chances to catch some traffic from the internet.

While this approach may have worked (a little) for a while, it was not a good long term strategy.

When people see your content, you want them to be impressed.  If they realize that you were just trying to game the system, you have little chancee of establishing a business relationship.

This is why, even if you can ‘game’ the system with sloppy content, it’s probably not in your best interest to do so.

Maybe our parents were right when they told us to “Just do your best.”  

This leads us into the next big lesson.

Lesson 4: Let service be your watchword

With so many sales strategies, marketing strategies, PR considerations, language patterns, it’s easy to lose yourself in a maze of things you could do when constructing your marketing messages.

I believe though, that one word trumps it all.

Service. 

When you create a youtube video, or a blog post to be found by search engines, the goal is to serve the searcher.

If you ask yourself “how can I serve this person in the best way”, you naturally lead yourself into creating great content.

When you create great content – the searcher has a good experience, Google will love you and leads and sales should follow.

But if you put the cart before the horse, so to speak, and focus only on leads and sales versus service, you run the risk of losing with your prospects and the search engines.

This is the same with your email list, your Facebook contacts, your team and the people you connect with on the phone.

If at any point, they sense that you only care about the sale, you’ve lost them.

So the ultimate question to ask in your marketing, my friend, is not – how can I sell them – it’s how can I serve them.

If you serve your market, they will love you and want to buy from you when the time is right.

Lesson 5: You can do a lot of things wrong, and still get great results

As I was shaking my head, looking at all the mistakes I’ve made in my marketing over the last few years, I was still so very grateful to know that despite all these errors, I’ve still been able to finish off another year of earning an amazing income from home for my family.

One of my old mentors used to say, “progress, not perfection is what we’re looking for.”

Thank goodness we don’t have to be perfect.

A healthy dose of action combined with the last secret on this list, seems to be able to produce amazing results, over time.

Take heart and plow forward, regardless of how good you feel your marketing is or isn’t, yet.

Lesson 6: Stay aligned.  Follow your moral compass.  There is light on the other side of tough decisions.

This last year I had to make some decisions that were difficult.  I don’t want to go into specifics but I’ll just say my heart was telling me to go one way, and my bank account was telling me to go another.

What do you do when monetarily, it looks safer and potentially even more lucrative to go a certain direction, but in your heart of hearts you know that in order to stay aligned with the principles and values you believe in, you have to go another way.

This last year I had situation just like that.  A situation where I said goodbye to a guaranteed income and hello to an unknown income, so I could follow my heart.

How did it all turn out?

Well the story is still being written.

…but let’s just say, in a relatively short amount of time, thanks to an amazing group of people (you know who you are) who connected with what we’re doing on a heart level, my family was able to recreate a sustainable income, with something I’m totally aligned with.

I have a quote hanging in my office that says…

Follow your heart.  It is the only compass you will ever need.  This life is your message to the world, let it be extraordinary.

If you’re in a spot now, or ever run into circumstances where you have to choose between your bank balance and your spirit balance, I really want to encourage you to stay aligned and follow your moral compass.  

There is light on the other side of tough decisions.

Lesson 7: For leaders and aspiring leaders.  Don’t burn the house down on your way out the door.

If you’re a leader in a company, what do you do when you decide to leave?

I’ve watched many leaders do this in different ways over the years and over time, I had formed some of my own opinions on how this should be done, the right way.

When it came time to go through it myself, it was hard.  There were so many things to think about, considerations to make, people to have concern for.

I don’t know there is a right way or a wrong way to do this, but here’s how my business partner and I tried to navigate this in the best way possible.

Whatever your reasons for leaving, remember that you are not always the ultimate authority on truth.  

Your perception is skewed, just like others perceptions can be skewed.

For this reason, I don’t think it’s wise to company bash with specifics as to why you left.

As for a public reason – we chose to use the term value – misalignment.  For us, that tells our reason in a way that’s truthful, without bashing anyone or anything.

Go quietly, into that good night.

When we chose to leave, we did not make huge public announcements on social media, email, conference calls – etc.

Why?  Because we realize that there are many people in the company who still love the path they’re on and the people they’re walking it with.

Additionally, we don’t want to harm anyone by drawing attention to the fact that we were leaving.

As much as possible, we wanted to make our transition without harm.   Because of this, we chose to leave in as quiet a manner as possible.

There’s no perfect way to do this, I realize, and as good as your intentions might be – some people will still be offended and upset.

I guess the point is, just because doing the right thing might be hard, complicated or difficult, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do it anyway.

If nothing else, I know Mike (my partner) and I can sleep well at night, knowing we did the best we could through a difficult situation.

And if you’re a leader or an aspiring leader, hopefully this can give you a model of leaving a company that doesn’t involve trying to burn the house down on your way out the door.  😉

Lesson 8: Master 1 traffic strategy.

I know you’ve probably heard this from so many people (just like I have).

And maybe, like me, you’ve heard it again and again, and STILL, for some strange reason, have failed to follow this advice and allowed yourself to get distracted.

If so, let this be your reminder.  Pick 1 traffic strategy and master it.

Gary Keller in his book, The One Thing, recommends dedicating 4 hours per day to your master craft.  For this reason my business partner and I have decided to invest 4 hours each weekday this coming year, to 1 and only 1 traffic strategy.

If you’re up for this commitment, with whatever time you have to dedicate to your business, let me know below and maybe we can hold each other accountable.

Lesson 9: Don’t be selfish.  Stay focused on your market.

When you decide to really market your business – meaning you’re going to use advertising to reach out, build a list, and serve a group of people while endeavoring to attract the right one’s to what your’e doing, it’s important to stay market focused.

I’m speaking from personal experience here.

Previously I’ve told myself, that “I just get so bored talking about the same old things over and over again.”

I’ve used this selfish, yes selfish line of reasoning to allow my message to get diluted as I ventured off into whatever mental playground had captured my imagination for the moment.

Big mistake.

Sales and marketing has been and probably always will be about serving others and your market in the ways that they want and need to be served.

The moment your message shifts from a “them” focus to a “Me” focus, you lose them.

So lesson #9 is all about deciding who your market is, and making a firm decision that, no matter what, you’re going to serve them in the ways they want and need to be served.

Lesson 10: Launching your business still works in 2016

You’ll hear lots of different messages from different people out in this crazy world of the internet.

In fact, while I was reviewing some of my old (somewhat spammy) blog posts, I had a funny thought cross my mind.

One definition of Attraction Marketing seems to be, to say whatever is most attractive, regardless of whether it’s true or you can deliver or not, in order to attract and make the sale. 

Funny, i know, because it has some truth to it right?  As far as how some people operate.

You’ll hear all sorts of things from marketers trying to sell you a product or service like..

“Connecting with your warm market is SILLY, ‘old school’ or just plain doesn’t work.”

Over the last 90 days – I launched my business by reaching out to people I was connected to on Facebook.

I did this using no lead capture pages or auto responders.

The only technology I had was a smart phone.

The result?

We were able to build a new and significant income stream for my family.

After 12 years of working from home, doing meetings, and falling in LOVE with the internet, It’s still my belief that launching your business to people you’re connected with (the right way) is the BEST way to get a new business started.

Lesson 11: It’s ok to be a hypocrite, as long as your working on it.

Ok, ok.. I’m a bit tongue in cheek on this one but here’s what I mean.

Have you ever held yourself back from delivering a message because you felt like you weren’t living it enough yourself, or werent’ an authority on it yet?

I know i have.

Here’s the problem with that line of thinking.

If we are going to wait until we’re doing everything right, before we start talking about doing the right things, we could be waiting an awful long time.

Perhaps the best illustration of this comes from an article I recently read on one of my most influential life and business mentors, Napoleon Hill.

This article I read was a review on a biography that had been written about Dr. Hill, which apparently shined light on some of his failures and weaknesses, which by the way, he certainly never professed to be exempt from.

In any case, Napoleon Hill wrote the first The Law Of Success in 1925, and the 2nd version in 1928.  He wrote Think And Grow Rich in 1937 which went on to sell millions and millions of copies and become the #1 personal development book of all time.

During these years, Napoleon Hill had periods of prosperity and periods where he lost it all.

In fact, he never really hit a sustained period of prosperity until after he was 50 years old.

One of the laws he covers extensively in The Law of Success is The Habit of Savings.  Apparently, according to this article, Napoleon Hill himself did not follow this habit very well until well after he had “written the book” on it.

Had Napoleon Hill waited until he was a perfect example, to begin writing about some of the great truths of life, we might all still be waiting for his books.

One of the my favorite quotes says that “Truth should be preached again and again because error is constantly being preached round about.”

A big benefit of preaching and hearing the truth, is that it tends to inspire in us, a desire to keep striving to follow it.

And none of us, it seems are doing a perfect job yet, by the way.

So don’t let your faults stop you from speaking of virtues.

Don’t let your setbacks stop you from preaching of future successes.

Don’t let who you are now, prevent you from speaking of the the man or the woman you are on your way to becoming.

Herein seems to lie a great secret of the process of change.

Make sense?

Lesson 12: The secret really is the secret.

After taking a deep dive into looking at some of what i’ve done to get to where I am now, and seeing all the glaring mistakes and imperfections stare me back in the face,

…I’m more convinced than ever – that the secret mentioned in the book Think And Grow Rich, really is the secret.

Is there one thing I’ve done?  Is there one outstanding character attribute I’ve exhibited over my last 12 years of home business that has been solely responsible for some of the success I’ve been blessed to experience?

Yes.

There is.

And it’s the same secret, that comes in 2 parts, Napoleon Hill mentions no fewer than 100 times through the book.

If you haven’t discovered it yet, my friend, I challenge you to keep searching.

So there you have my top 12 home business marketing lessons of 2016.

Lesson 1: Fill your content with value, not pitch.

Lesson 2:  Stay generic in the marketing you want to stay out there on the internet.

Lesson 3: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Lesson 4: Let service be your watchword

Lesson 5: You can do a lot of things wrong, and still get great results

Lesson 6: Stay aligned.  Follow your moral compass.  There is light on the other side of tough decisions.

Lesson 7: For leaders and aspiring leaders.  Don’t burn the house down on your way out the door.

Lesson 8: Master 1 traffic strategy.

Lesson 9: Don’t be selfish.  Stay focused on your market.

Lesson 10: Launching your business still works in 2016

Lesson 11: It’s ok to be a hypocrite, as long as your working on it.

Lesson 12: The secret really is the secret.

Did you get value from this post?  I’d really love to hear your thoughts down below.

Here’s to an AMAZING 2017!

Upward and onward my friend.

Yours in freedom,

Paul Hutchings