Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Don't Try It All, Try Once and Knock It Out of The Park

There are two theories to success:

1) Try everything you possibly can and eventually one will work.

2) Know what you're going to do with certainty, DO IT and be successful at it no matter what!

I have always tended towards #2.

History: The first job I went after...I got.
The first article I wrote...was published.
The first book I wrote...was published.
My first business...was successful.
The first high paying job I applied for...I not only got but it developed into a job with dream terms.

Needless to say, I knew what I wanted, researched it and approached it as though I was the only one on the planet that was going to get it. I never even considered competitors. The advantage I had over all other applicants was I didn't hesitate. I never listened to anyone telling me it could not be done.

"Why would you even try? You don't have experience."

I didn't listen. I just did it!

Call it stupidity, call it aggressiveness. I call it the path to success.

All business actions in my opinion should follow this. Why? Two reasons:

1) Pure mathematics. It is cheaper to do something once and be successful the first time than try 5, 10 or 100 times and only be successful once.

2) The power of your abilities. Most people do not know this but you have many more senses than 5. You can sense something that will be successful and focus on making it successful. I am not talking having blind faith in yourself...I am saying start on instinct, gather data, reevaluate the instinct, gather more data, survey, and finally just GO FOR IT!

You KNOW if you are capable of doing something. The thing that usually stops us is fear. To overcome it do your homework, listen to stories of other successful people and talk to people.

Swing and KNOW you are going to knock it out of the park. Crack!

Monday, November 10, 2008

Mining for Gold


While trying to figure out how to collect a specific piece of data from Kijiji.ca I happened upon the following site:


What is amazing about it is you can type in the name of a site and get all the demographics you can ever want FOR FREE!


And the information is PRICELESS.


Let's take the following as an example:

http://www.apartments.com/

From their data, I determined my demographic is 63% women likely between the age of 18-34 that also want to rent either a car or moving truck, are looking for a better job and possibly want to buy a home instead.

This gives me so many ways to target my demographic that it scares me.

I know who to target, what their income is likely at, their race, whether they have children, if they graduated college, on and on.

Check it out!