Happy “freedom” month to our US, French and Canadian members. Given the number of international folks who follow me, I would be remiss to overlook that many of them are not celebrating their country’s freedom this July. However, every country has SOME holiday or celebration where freedom from oppression is celebrated, so I’m going to dedicate this article to “things you must declare independence from.”
That’s because the desire to be free is a shared, common value and a prize-worthy of pursuit and sacrifice. It’s the primary reason people go into business for themselves: freedom from having a boss, freedom from having someone telling them what to do and how to do it, freedom to keep the hours they want, and freedom to work as much or as little as they want.
The motivation for me to learn how to sell was financial freedom; it was the ONLY job where I could earn as much as I wanted based on my performance, NOT based on my background, age, sex, lack of education, lack of experience, hours worked or even “what the job pays.” To quote Zig, I could wake up one day and decide to give myself a raise – and it would be effective as soon as I did.
But as the saying goes, “freedom isn’t free.” It’s earned. Fought for. Protected. If you desire financial freedom, you don’t get it by wishing for it or demanding it from others. And you certainly don’t get it by p’ing and moaning about your external circumstances, wishing it was easier, or hoping things will get better. You get it by going out into the free market and earning it like everyone else. Overcoming the SAME problems, challenges, obstacles as everyone else.
The GOOD NEWS for some: success, in any way you want to define it, is a choice.
This is a very “inconvenient truth” for many who are failing and cling to their good excuse, preferring it over a good opportunity.
You can CHOOSE to…
- Spend 30 minutes, an hour or more a day working on improving your ability to sell. Or you can choose to watch TV, screen-suck Facebook or consume some other “entertainment” on your phone.
- Get up at 5:00 a.m. and work ON your marketing, work ON your business, work ON creating systems and processes. Or you can choose to sleep in and complain about “not having any time” to do marketing.
- Spend your money on cars, vacations, new technology, and gadgets. Or you can choose to invest that in a seminar or workshop.
- Read a book or watch TV. To improve yourself or not. That is 100% your choice.
But here’s what I will tell you:
Nobody has the right to complain about something in their life or their business they don’t like if they are not ACTIVELY working on improving or changing.
I know I’ve done this “rant” before, but it bears repeating. I’m sick to death of people – educated, capable, grown adults who chose to go into business for themselves – complaining to me about how there are “no good people to hire” or about how “clients don’t value IT” or about how hard it is to make money in an IT business, how hard it is to manage their time, how hard it is to do marketing.
Yet these thumb-sucking crybabies refuse to invest any real-time or money into improving themselves. ALL of the problems they complain about CAN BE SOLVED. And not with “secrets” locked up and reserved for only a select few. But lying about in plain sight, in books, in videos, in seminars and workshops. Many of which are FREE, easily accessed via the phone they carry around with them everywhere.
Today, in the free country we live in, with ALL of the information we have available at our fingertips, there is absolutely, positively NO EXCUSE for failure in business, in marketing, in selling, or in improving any “failure” situation plaguing you.
Never before have the barriers to starting a business been so low. Or the opportunities to achieve financial independence been so great. And never before have so many powerful tools and so much technology been so readily, easily available to everyone.
Very few things in life, both good and bad, are unmovable and permanent. There are too many variables, too many changes in the world around us, too many paths and opportunities, to allow a situation/person/business to exist unchanged.
You might totally suck at selling today, but if you get up every single day for the next 365 days and study and practice how to succeed at selling, reading books, scripting yourself, practicing at getting better, improvement WILL come. You suck at selling because you choose to suck at it, and refuse to improve.
And right now, this very moment, you are making a choice. Make it a good one.
RELATED: Not FREE in your IT services business? Get a one-hour free consultation with one of my team and walk away with a marketing roadmap showing you how to get to where YOU want to go. Fill out the survey at: www.TechnologyMarketingToolkit.com/consult
