Practice Then Offer, or Offer Then Revise?
I’m sure it comes as no surprise to the three people reading this catalog of missteps, but I’m reconsidering a position. And, given that I’m a fumbler, I’m reconsidering the position that I worked so hard trying to articulate earlier this week.
And so I ask myself (and you, if you’re amenable) maybe the practice that I’m supposed to be doing is one of learning by doing?
Here’s why I’m waffling: Much of this week, while researching another post I’ve been working on, I’ve been going through online internet business instruction sites. It didn’t seem to matter what I was supposed to be looking for, three little words stuck out over and over, on all sorts of places:
Make An Offer
So many places list this as the first, most important focus after finding your passion. Several places that I came across mentioned that the ability to overcome the fear of making an offer and actually present customers with the opportunity to buy represents the difference between people who treat internet marketing as a business versus those that are “merely trying it out.”
I can see the validity of starting from an offer and making it work. I can understand that the correcting course and incorporating feedback from customers is a valid path towards a successful business. I’m just clever enough that I can see that with a business that has very little overhead, there is nearly no risk (setup costs and hosting? please!) to trying an offer.
Making an offer is powerful. That’s the gateway that brought me as a customer to the products that you can see above under “Stuff We’ve Bought.” No one knows to buy if you don’t suggest that they can (unless you monetize through advertising, but even then…). Making an offer defines your business, it defines your customer, and allows the refining of both business and customer through that powerful technique known as “communication.”
I get all this. It’s powerful, but…
I Have Fears and Excuses
Now that statement might seem a little incongruous coming from a guy who’s already admitting on the that great forum of international communication called the internets that he’s a goofy, neophyte failure at internet business, but I’m here to be honest about what trials and tribulations I go through with the desire that I’ll be able to look back at this one day and laugh. You, of course, are welcome to look at this right now and laugh.
So I have fears:
- I don’t know anything that anyone would want to pay for.
- Given the quality of information available, I don’t have anything new to add.
- I couldn’t stay relevant, even if I could come up with something; things change too fast.
- Support? How can I support what I’m not sure that I know?
Each one of those fears, of course, brings up a whole host of chattering excuses that help paralyze me and keep me from action. But, I am developing the habit of practice that I discussed earlier to help combat paralysis.
The question is: Is practice a way of just spinning your wheels and avoiding true progress, or is it a way of making sure that you don’t have to think of the little things when it comes to producing the big things?
Any advice? Anyone else having the same issues? Anyone been through this, and if so, how did you get past it? Sure would be nice knowing that there’s a way around or through.
Photo used through the gracious permission of rochelle, et. al via Creative Commons; Attribution license.
