What is Success?
Ever since Bilbo Baggins said “not all who wander are lost,” my personal experience has consisted of watching people use that quote to justify wildly irresponsible decisions and behaviors.
Sure, in a number of ways, I completely agree with the Hobbit — we ought to explore! We can learn wonders while wandering, and there is absolutely no need for a destination!
And there’s even a place for this wanderlust in business, just not when we are trying to generate awareness and interest for our company. For that, we need specificity — we need a destination to move toward. Something to measure against.
That’s why, when we spend money to gain traffic, we want to be crystal clear about what we consider success to be.
- Does it mean a 5% click-through rate?
- Does it mean $1,000 in sales?
- What results do we want to see?
To me, it is a rare and silly person that happily wastes their budget without getting results — and yet we see countless businesses setting their precious cash on fire by launching their ad campaigns long before they’ve bothered to ask themselves the right questions.
All because nobody told them a better way.
That is why we’re here.
It can be so confusing to identify what the right questions are. Especially in the age of the internet.
There is a vast and overwhelming cacophony of advice, shouted by a seemingly infinite number of “gurus,” and it should be a good thing that we have access to all of it — but, instead of making things easier, we’re often left confused, wondering what, exactly, we ought to do.
In what order?
Isn’t there some step-by-step guide?
As you know, building a business is hard, nobody has to tell you that. And no amount of push-button marketing “secrets” will change that fact.
Worse still, we have our perpetual “busy-ness” with no consistent progress to show for it.
If time is our only real currency, it is safe to say we are not getting a great return.
We Wabbits believe the heart of the issue is: how the destination — success — is defined.
After all, how can we reach a given goal when we aren’t quite sure what it is?
Two stories illustrate our approach the problem…
Well, ok… the first isn’t really a story, it is an old quote with ambiguous origins:
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!
Some say it comes from an American General during the Vietnam war, other sources suggest origins in ancient China.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea where it comes from. I’ve tried to track it down, with no luck.
My guess is: somewhere with elephants.
You’re welcome.
Origins (and bad jokes) aside, the meaning of the quote is mindset. Eating an elephant by oneself seems like an impossible task. And there’s no creature on this planet who could do it in a single bite. So, we have to shift our thinking from short term, to a longer view.
The reliable way to accomplish massive goals is to do so a little bit at a time. We ought not expect immediate success — rather, we see what lies in front of us as a process (which will take time) so we prepare ourselves for the long journey ahead.
There aren’t many journey’s longer than that of Britain’s 8-man rowing team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. No British rowing team had won an Olympic gold medal since 1912 — but, this team changed everything.
So how did they go from a relatively average rowing team, to gold-medal-winning Olympians?
Ben Hunt-Davies, a member of the team that year, tells the story of their accomplishment in his book “Will it Make the Boat Go Faster.”
As he tells it, the team developed a one-question response to every decision they made, no matter how crucial, or seemingly insignificant the decision might be. This single question enabled them to assess every situation, decision, and obstacle — while avoiding the predictable pitfalls that so many of us face.
Every team member asked themselves this one question before making a decision or taking an opportunity: Will it make the boat go faster?
Q: Should I eat a bunch of candy?
Will it make the boat go faster?
Probably not.
Q: Should I wear Viking horns while we row?
Will it make the boat go faster?
No, it adds wind resistance, take the helmet off.
Sure, this question can call for some extreme decisions, but Olympians are extreme people.
They do whatever it takes.
If you want to see the race, here you go:
Listen to that crowd. Do you hear what this moment meant to them?
With a little modification, we can use that team’s concept to enhance every aspect of our business.
We start by redefining two terms: boat, and faster.
Our boat is not the specific offer, funnel, or campaign — it is our business, craft, or profession.
Faster refers to how we are doing relative to our business’s goal. For Wabbit, the goal is:
Produce Happy Customers.
Everything we do is measured relative to that goal.
Let’s look at two examples…
- The complex example: We have a sales funnel which generates 50 customers per day, with a 20% refund rate (within 30 days), which means we are producing 40 customers per day.
If we could lower our refund rate to 10%, this would make my “boat” go faster because I’m now creating 45 happy customers instead of the original 40. - The simple example: Imagine the same sales funnel generates 45 happy customers per day and we increase the output to 60 happy customers per day, our “boat” would again be going faster.
Yet, each of those examples assumes we already have clarity and precision about what “boat” and “faster” mean for us, in our context.
Without that, situations become cloudy and vague.
What happens if we scale to tens of thousands of customers, but they’re not quite “happy” anymore?
What does that do to our position in the big, infinite game we’re all playing?
If we don’t find (and maintain) our clarity and precision, we risk losing sight of the profound power of Ben Hunt-Davies’ question.
We cannot go faster without understanding what faster means for us, in our unique context.
Remember when I said I’d give you an assignment at the end of each of these sections?
We do this because active participation is more effective than passive consumption.
Here is your first assignment…
Take out some paper and a pen. You’re going to define the shape of your business. Be as clear and specific as possible. To get you started, use the following questions as writing prompts:
- What do you get paid for? What do you sell?
- Is it physical or digital? Product or a service?
- What do your customers buy from you?
- Don’t get too hung up on front end vs. back end, just get the broad-strokes written down so they’re visible. Free up some memory.
- How do customers find you? Where do they find you? Is it online? Offline?
- This could be word-of-mouth, affiliates, referrals, blogs, organic traffic, paid traffic, and all sorts of other online content.
- What are the measurable steps that take place between their awareness and a purchase?
- What do your prospects see and hear?
- What do they do that puts your business on their mind, in their thoughts, on their radar?
- How does the relationship begin?
- How do they deepen their engagement?
- What causes their eventual purchase?
It is important that you take the time to answer these questions thoroughly, thoughtfully, and with precision. Everything we discuss over the next nine sections will build on this humble, mind-blowingly powerful exercise.
It is an incredible oversimplification but, one could say that all businesses operate due to a positive relationship between traffic and conversion.
In the next section, I’m going to show you a basic, powerful framework you can use to increase your potential on any traffic platform.
Take your time, complete the assignment, and then, let’s keep going…