This year will mark my 18th year in business. In 2007 I started my first business. It failed. In the global downturn that hit us here in the UK in 2009, pretty much all of our clients stopped buying from us and we had to close the branding and advertising business that we set up.
My best friend and I at the time, honestly thought the world had imploded on us. Things got worse for me personally when he decided to leave the country and I had to deal with the entire closure of the business on my own. This included the debt that the company owed and gave me a nine year lesson to learn whilst paying back the debt, what not to do in business.
Even now as I sit here, buzzed up after the Oat Milk Flat White I just had at Starbucks while meeting a friend for coffee, I feel blessed to be coming up to 14 years after I started my second business. But, I do remember so many mistakes that I’ve made over the years that could’ve seen this business fall flat on it’s face as well.
It’s a privilege to be able to coach and mentor business owners and how to grow their businesses, helping them to avoid many of the mistakes I’ve made over the years. The trouble is, I’m seeing some very similar patterns in how many entrepreneurs have started their businesses, only to be at risk of them failing fast.
One of my HodgesNet Community members reached out t me this week. Let’s call her “Jane” to help save any embarrassment from the rest of my community who are going to read this newsletter and potentially know who we’re talking about. Jane has spent eight months building her course on Kajabi, perfecting every detail of her funnel, sales pages and nurture sequences, but she hasn't made a single sale yet. We jumped on a very quick Zoom call, I suggested a list of things to try. She went away saying she was going to take action and implement them over the next couple of weeks, and then we’re going to reconvene to see how things have gone. But this story is all too familiar.
Jane’s story is exactly what I see happening with so many entrepreneurs. Not just those that are just starting out, but also those who’ve been around for a little while.
I want to break down the five biggest traps and pitfalls that I think Jane has fallen into and also what I see many otehrs struggling with also. And more importantly, I'll give you my take on how to avoid them.
Ready… get your notebook ready!
1. The "Perfect Launch" Trap
Whilst I had my agency running, I spent the over a year (yes, a full year!) Trying to create the perfect product to launch with. I wanted beautiful workbooks, an amazing website, and so much content inside the membership area, it took forever to build it out. In the time that it took from the start, to me sending out an invitation to a webinar to sell the program, I’d made zero sales because it was 13 months before I got an offer out there.
Today, I know that I can strip things back so quickly for clients and launch within one or two weeks to be able to start seeing sales coming in.
Done is better than perfect
Whatever you launch with, remember it’s only ever version 1.0. You can always improve it over time. Not every client I have worked with has been able to launch in just a few weeks, but more recently speed to market has been the prime objective with anyone I’m working with.
Money loves speed. Every day you spend perfecting is a day someone could be getting results from your product.
This week...
Pick ONE thing you've been sitting on and launch it within the next 7 days. No fancy funnels. No complex systems. Just you, your solution, you offer and people who need it. What’s the worst that could happen?
2. The "Me First" Mindset
Let me be real with you...
Your customers don't care about…
- Your perfectly curated Instagram grid
- That fancy font you spent hours choosing
- How aesthetically pleasing your brand colors are
What they care about is RESULTS.
I remember working with a design client, someone in the interior design space. Everything had to be pixel perfect on the website, the spacing of text in emails had to be better than the system generated and the whole user experience needed to match the expectations that she wanted if she was going through the course herself.
Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these things, but...
When you’re creating from a perspective of everything that YOU would PREFER, you often forget what the CUSTOMER actually NEEDS.
Sometimes you just have to ditch the brand guidelines and focus purely on getting the customer the result. And I say that as a branding guy!
Be 100% sold out to get the customer the result that they’re looking for, rather than engineering space that you would be happy playing in yourself.
This week...
Look at your latest piece of content. Ask yourself: "Does this help my customer get closer to their goal, or did I create it to try and make me look good?"
3. The "Features vs Benefits" Confusion
Last week a member of my community shared their sales page with me for me to give some kind of comment oad feedbak. It had been up for a month and NO SALES. She wanted some helpful feedback.
It was packed with information about the product and all the pricing and packages. 12 modules, 24 worksheets, 6 bonus videos, 4 payment plans, a huge bio about themselves and a list of FAQs.
It was missing the most important thing - the Transformation.
People will never buy your products and services because you have an all singing, or dancing product or service. It’s not about everything that you’ve put into the program, it’s about what the customer is going to get out of it.
Everyone who will buy your product or program will buy based on the TRANSFORMATION they believe they are going to get after they purchase.
I spent an hour and a half, and I rewrote their page for her. I was able to also distil everything into one sentence for her in as a new headline for the top of the page…
“Busy Moms - Get Twice as Much Done in 30 Days
- Working Just 12 Hours a Week!”
Do you want to know what the headline was at the top of the page before?
“Get My 12 Week Program Containing Over 72 Hours of
Video Training to Learn About Productivity”
She implemented the changes and messaged me yesterday (Wednesday), the day after I sent the re-write back to her. She made 6 sales overnight!
This Week
Write down what your customer REALLY wants in one sentence. If you can't do it in one sentence, keep working until you can. And then, go and review your sales page for your core offer. Make sure that anyone can understand the transformation they’re going to get after they buy, rather than just understand all of the elements they’re going to have access to.
4. The "Outdated Advice" Spiral
Here's something that might ruffle some feathers, and I am not scared of doing it either.
That marketing book from 2015?
Those course materials from 2020?
They're probably holding you back.
And that “expert” you’re listening too right now...
....are they really a credible expert?
I mentioned earlier I just got back from Starbucks before I stared writing this newsletter. I blame here for the buzz from the Flat White! She is in marketing too. We talked about a lot of differnet things going on in the inline world right now, and then she shared with me some challenges that a couple of her clients were facing with their marketing. One of them had employed another agency to create a whole bunch of content for their website in the form of blog posts.
The problem was, this agency outsourced this work to somebody who literally copied and pasted from an AI platform and published blog posts that were completely off topic. They didn’t talk about the product, and they certainly weren’t checked before they were published.
Apparently, this is how this expert suggested they would get ranked in the search engines and it would help their search engine optimisation (SEO). If you know anything about this kind of work, you’ll know that the search engines find it really difficult to rank any content created with AI. And more importantly, content that is going to be created and published on your site needs to actually have something to do with the product itself surly?
Neil Patel is the Godfather of modern SEO and he says...
"AI-generated content generally does not rank well in search engine results because it often lacks originality, depth, and the human touch that Google prioritizes"
The work that my friend's client had done by a so-called “expert” who sold in a blogging service to a business that ended up doing more harm than good is just the example of the kind of bad advice that goes on all the time.
Unfortunately, people think that they "experts" know what they are talking about. The worse kinds of people doing this are the ones just after the affiliate kick back after getting you to sign up to some kind of system or software. They get stuck in the same old trap of trying to offer a way to be able to build things after you buy, with yesterday’s strategies that they read from some book published a decade ago.
The digital landscape changes fast. What worked yesterday, let alone a few years ago, might not work today.
This week
Look at who you're learning from. Are they getting results RIGHT NOW for themselves and their clients, or are they just recycling old content?
THE CURRENCY OF CREDIBILITY TODAY IS RESULTS.
Look for the signs and listen to the people who are actually making things work for their business today.
5. The "False Economy" Effect
Let me share a quick bit of maths with you...
Client A - spent $5,000 on a pretty website, and $1,000 on various tools. Zero sales.
Client B - spent 3 days building a landing page themselves, $2,000 on targeted ads and $1,500 on expert guidance. Result? £5,000 in revenue their first month.
Yes, this is a fictitious scenario, but I illustrate it here to try and bring your attention to one of the worse patterns of behaviour that I’ve seen happen in the online marketing world. It comes from the mindset of...
“I’m going to spend a lot of money building the thing so it's perfect, and then people will love it”
…Versus…
“Let me get something up that enables me to sell, and then use the rest of my budget to get in front of people I can serve that don't know I even exsit”
The false economy I’m talking about, is that off spending all your money building the thing that you need to get out to market, rather than actually putting your money into the things that you need to spend money on to grow your business properly.
I recognise that a lot of business owners have a fear of spending money on the wrong things, but actually, they ARE spending money on all the wrong things.
Spending money on getting to market faster, having the ear of the right mentors and consultants, being part of amazing masterminds and advertising, are the 3 areas that we should all be spending our money on. If you build it, they WON'T come.
I know some people would disagree with me about the whole advertising thing, but the one thing that spending money on advertising does that nothing else can do…
It gets you in front of thousands of people almost instantly.
If you don’t have an audience, you can spend time creating content and build that audience slowly overtime. But if you’re looking for mass appeal for your products or your services, and you’re just starting out, put as much budget as you can into getting into market in a fast way and invest in things like advertising.
This week
List your last 6 weeks business expenses. Label each as either “Getting in front of customers”, “Operational” or “Looking good” - the results might surprise you! Do you need to prioritise some different things to get a better result from your marketing?
Your Action Steps This Week
1. The "Done is Better Than Perfect" Challenge
Just like I did with my community member “Jane”, pick ONE thing you've been trying to perfect and commit to launching it in the next 7 days. Remember - it's only version 1.0. You can always improve it later.
2. The Customer Result Audit
Take a page from my interior design client's story…
o Review your latest marketing materials or website “enhancements” that you have made recently
o Highlight anything that's there just because YOU like it
o Ask yourself that crucial question - "Does this help my customer get closer to their goal?"
3. The One-Sentence Transformation Test
Following the example of my community member who went from "72 Hours of Video Training" to "Get Twice as Much Done in 30 Days":
o Look at your current offer headline on your sales page
o Now rewrite it focusing only on the transformation
o Keep working until you can express it in one clear, benefit-focused sentence
4. The Expert Credibility Check
Think about the "experts" you're currently following:
o List your top 3 information sources
o Check their latest case studies and results
o If they're just recycling old content from yesteryear, or always AI-generated content, it might be time to find new mentors
5. The Marketing Budget Reset
Just like in my Client A vs Client B example:
o List your last 6 weeks of expenses
o Label them as either "Getting in front of customers", "Operational" or "Looking good"
o Create your next month's budget prioritizing customer acquisition over perfection
Real Talk Time
Here's what I know for sure, the entrepreneurs who succeed aren't the ones with the prettiest websites or the most complex funnels. They're the ones who...
- Launch fast
- Focus on customer results
- Invest in reaching real people
Are you running your business with all three of these checked off?
Your business doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be helpful.
Keep it simple,
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