Ever see a picture of a performer spinning plates on sticks? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done in person, but I’ve seen pictures of it similar to this one:

As an entrepreneur and service provider, I feel like plate spinning is a good metaphor for my life.

There are always lots of plates in the air. And I have to keep them all spinning — or risk one of them falling and breaking.

Sometimes I finish a project and I get to stop spinning a plate. Yet, inevitably, I have a new plate that needs to be spun.

I tell ya — it ain’t easy. And it requires a lot of work.

But it’s fun.

Secret #1 is that being successful in business requires work.

Secret #2 is that work is meant for pleasure. It’s one of the few things God has provided on this green earth to give us meaningful satisfaction.

So what are you waiting for? Go spin some plates!

-Ryan M. Healy

It’s not how much you write, but how much your writing matters.

Sometimes I get jealous when I see that somebody’s written 5,000 words in a day (or whatever the case may be). I think: “Man, I wish I could write that much in a day!”

And yet: Of the writing of books there is no end. (Ecc. 12:12)

The real question is not: How much are you writing?

It’s: Does your writing matter?

Wayne Buckhanan tweets:

Personally, I believe that writing more frequently — rather than writing more words — leads you to the writing that matters.

As in so many things, consistency is key.

-Ryan M. Healy

In high school, I joined the newspaper staff as soon as they would let me, and I took all the honors English classes I could. I was in love with reading and writing — I couldn’t get enough of it.

In honors English we would read a book every two weeks (usually a classic), then write an essay about the book we had just read. It was like clockwork. Every other Monday a new essay was due.

But there was a catch. We never wrote our essays at home. We didn’t even type them! Nope. We wrote them out by hand… in class… in 90 minutes or less (we were on a block schedule with four 90-minute periods a day).

The reason my teacher did it this way was because essay web sites were just coming into fashion. Students could download dozens of pre-written essays on just about any book they wanted. The business of plagiarism  had hung out its shingle and students were responding in kind.

At that time, search technology was in its infancy, so it was actually fairly difficult for teachers to discern whether a paper had been plagiarized or not. Thus the dilemma: Let students write essays at home or force them to do them in class?

My teacher chose the latter. And while it was stressful back then, I’m extremely grateful she decided to do it that way.

You see, the discipline of writing a timed essay by hand once every two weeks forced me to be an efficient writer. I learned how to write fast without editing myself. I learned how to build sentences in my head faster than my hand could transcribe them.

Now, years later, I will sometimes use an $8 dial timer that I picked up at Bed, Bath & Beyond to time myself. If I’m feeling distracted or I’m having a hard time focusing in on my writing, I’ll set the timer for 45 minutes. I’ll force myself to write for the entire time.

Guess what? Every time I set that timer, I write faster. The power of a micro-deadline works just like a normal deadline: it makes you work!

Next time you find yourself struggling to write, pull out your timer or stopwatch, set it for 30 or 45 minutes, and start writing. You’ll be amazed by how quickly your mind snaps to attention. And you’ll be amazed by how quickly the words spill onto the page.

-Ryan M. Healy

If somebody wrongs you, it’s natural to be upset. And it’s natural to want some kind of retribution or revenge.

Just look at how we as a nation reacted to 9/11. Everybody wanted to take up arms and go kill some terrorists. (In fact, we’re still on a witch hunt, killing people in countries who had nothing to do with 9/11.)

We could have reacted differently. We could have turned the other cheek, forgiven the perpetrators, and earned the world’s respect.

Unfortunately, we showed our true colors. To our detriment, we proved we are not a forgiving people.

The reason I’m writing this post today is because it’s WAY too easy to get bent out of shape when you are wronged. It’s WAY too easy to hold a grudge and boil in your own venom.

There is a better way.

It’s called forgiveness.

Just yesterday I was reading a post by Internet lawyer Mike Young. He writes, “Everyone makes mistakes. If perfection is the standard by which marketers are to be measured, none would meet it.”

I totally agree.

So while I did “name names” in Internet Marketing on Life Support, I did it to protect unsuspecting people from what I consider egregious abuses of trust. It was not to imply that I or anybody else is perfect.

A Better Way to Respond

Personally, I’ve been ripped off by multiple clients in the past. Some to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Of course, I could have moped about it, spent time thinking of ways to get even. But that kind of behavior is totally unproductive and not gratifying in the least.

In each case, I’ve made changes to prevent the same situation from happening again, then shifted my attention toward finding new (and better) clients. It’s paid off.

My advice: Keep short accounts with people.

As King Solomon advised in Proverbs 19:11, “A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression.”

So when somebody wrongs you (and it will happen), better to just chalk it up to experience and keep going. You’ll be a better human — and you’ll be more productive — if you learn to forgive, forget, and move on with your life.

-Ryan M. Healy

Every business owner is in the bridge-building business: one project (or sale) often leads to another.

Think of every client not in terms of what you make today, but rather what you might make in the future as a result of that client’s testimonial and referrals.

Clients are the bridge between your present and your future.

You want to be in the bridge-building business, not the bridge-burning business.

Every time you burn a bridge, you actually burn two of them. You first burn the bridge between you and your client. Then you burn the bridge your client might have built between you and a future client.

Which means anytime you burn a bridge you are literally burning the bridge to your future! Not a good plan.

In any project you take on, in every sale you make, always give your best effort, your best service — even when you don’t feel like it.

Build bridges; don’t burn them.

-Ryan M. Healy

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something shows up in your mailbox that proves you wrong.

Yesterday, as I was going through the mail, I found a letter from DirecTV, a satellite TV provider. I was intrigued because the letter was not addressed to me as a consumer, but rather to me as a business owner.

So I opened the letter and gave it a quick read.

The letter makes a lot of eyebrow-raising claims. For instance: “Bring in more customers by entertaining them while they wait, shop or work out with the best variety of sports, shows and up-to-the-minute news.”

Hmmm… I guess that’s possible. I personally avoid any auto shop that has a TV that dominates the waiting room. Inevitably there’s some banal talk show blaring and I have to suffer through it as I try my best to read.

In reality, TV in a waiting room is like tyranny on a small scale. All the patients are subjected to watching or hearing what one person has decided to watch. Is that a reason for me to come to your business? No way!

I’d rather some books or a stack of magazines I can thumb through — everybody gets to choose their own “channel” without bothering anybody else.

One thing’s for sure: You don’t choose a doctor based on the quality of the television programming in the waiting room!

Still, given that most people are addicted to television, I guess having satellite TV in a waiting room could give you a small transient advantage. DirecTV offers this fact as proof: “90% of business subscribers believe DirecTV increases their business.”

Yeah, and lots of people believe things that aren’t actually true. You must be running a pretty shoddy business if TV programming brings more customers in. (One possible exception: health clubs.)

But let’s move on to a separate claim — the most ludicrous claim I’ve probably ever encountered in advertising.

In this particular mailing, there is a buck slip with six so-called “facts” for how DirecTV improves a business.

Fact #6 is the one that just kills me: “Employees are more productive when they have a constant connection to current events.”

Wait a second. Am I reading that correctly — that employees are more productive when they’re constantly connected to a television?!

If improving employee productivity were really that easy, our GDP should be growing by double digits every quarter. Just watch more TV — and watch those numbers climb!

It’s clear to me that whoever wrote the copy for this promo is not an entrepreneur and has never run a business in his or her life. Heck, the copywriter doesn’t even understand what business is about.

Here are some tips for the marketing folks at DirecTV:

First, stop the B.S. Employees don’t work harder when they’re watching TV.

Second, how’s about you actually put some effort into a little thing called list selection.

I can think of three groups of business owners who might be interested in getting DirecTV for their businesses: doctors who have waiting rooms; auto shops that have waiting rooms; and high-end health clubs that want to differentiate from low-end fitness centers.

Write the promo for one type of business — and then send it to just those businesses. I work from my home and have no employees. What need do I have for TV programming in my study?

None. Nada. Zip.

But I guess DirecTV doesn’t know that because they used the shotgun approach to send out a ridiculous sales piece to a whole bunch of business owners — because all businesses will get more customers with better TV programming!

Lesson: Direct mail that is not targeted properly and is not based in reality is doomed to fail. Be wise.

-Ryan M. Healy

A common theme I’m seeing come up over and over again among the customers of my clients’ businesses is this: “I’m broke. I can’t order/register/subscribe because I don’t have any money.”

I guess I can’t blame people for tossing out financial objections. After all, a lot of people are hurting financially, and we all have to face economic reality at some point. If there’s no money, there’s just no money!

When this happens, people are likely to think they have a money problem. They may even say things like “I have big money problems” or “We’re struggling because of our financial problems.”

But is a lack of money a “money problem”?

I don’t think so.

Usually, a lack of money is merely a symptom of some deeper condition. For instance, you may have:

• A procrastination problem – Always waiting until tomorrow to do what could be done today.

• A laziness problem – Never being able to bring yourself to WORK, much less WORK HARD.

• A negativity problem – Always focusing on the bad things in life to the point where you are paralyzed by fear or hopelessness.

• An attention problem – Glued to the boob tube, YouTube, cell phone, or Internet so often that you don’t have enough time to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams.

• A discipline problem – Always starting things, never finishing them. Or working a lot on a project one week, then ignoring it for a month or more at a stretch.

Rarely do we actually have money problems. What we have are character problems.

Our bank accounts are often a reflection of how disciplined we are, how much value we give to other people.

Therefore: If you shift your focus away from the outward manifestation of money and turn that focus inward to see how you can improve yourself, then the pay-off will be far greater than you might expect.

Perhaps you’ll even be able to say goodbye to your so-called “money problems.”

-Ryan M. Healy

Back in the summer of 2005, I found myself between a rock and a hard place.

On April 19, 2005, exactly one month after my second child was born, I quit my job to pursue a new career as a financial planner. I was able to do this because I had received a bonus and, at the time, it was enough to pay my bills for about 2 or 3 months.

Now, I did have a plan. I had partnered with a successful financial planner. He was going to pay me a commission for calling his leads and getting them to attend free dinners. He would then give them a presentation to encourage them to invest with him.

Everything looked like it was going to work out perfectly.

Except one little thing happened that I did not expect.

The local paper in which my “partner” was advertising went belly up the same week I quit my job. And just like that,

All the Leads Dried Up!

Well, I didn’t let that discourage me. I began calling all the old leads in the database… and actually succeeded in filling a couple dinners.

This was no easy task. I was calling leads up to 12 months old — and they didn’t remember anything about the postcard they filled out a year ago.

I might as well have been cold-calling.

Two months later, I had made a couple hundred bucks and was going nowhere fast. Not to mention, my bonus money was nearly gone. I estimated I had about two weeks of money left before I would be unable to pay my bills.

Now, I could have gone back to my previous employer and begged for my old job back… or I could have tried to find a new job… but deep down I didn’t really want another job.

I wanted to be self-employed!

So I did what any slightly crazy entrepreneur would do: I started my freelance copywriting business.

And here I am four years later, still enjoying the freelancer’s life.

Why did I succeed where so many others fail? There are probably many reasons, but the biggest reason of all is

I Had No Choice!

I literally had to make it work… or face losing my house, my cars, and everything else. I had no “plan B.”

In fact, “plan A” was “plan B!”

It seems that among successful entrepreneurs, many of them have experienced a similar “moment of truth” — a moment when they had no choice but to succeed.

As Ken McCarthy points out in his System Secrets book, “Having been in desperate straits more than once in my life, I know there is nothing like ‘do or die’ to focus the mind.” (p. 146)

This is a big reason I think having a “plan B” is overrated. In fact, if you’ve got all kinds of contingencies and backup plans in place, they may even be keeping you from succeeding!

That’s because anytime there’s a safety net, we’re likely to use it. It’s just human nature. We’ll set out to try something new, give it less than our best effort, then fall back into the relative comfort of our “safety net hammock.”

Why?

Because the Safety Net Is There.

Whenever you have a “plan B” or backup plan or safety net, it’s probably blocking you from the success you seek.

You don’t hear many success stories from 30-year-old guys living in their parents’ basements. Now you  know why.

You know who else has a great “moment of truth” story?

Copywriter and “kitchen table entrepreneur” Doberman Dan.

He tells of a time when he turned his back on a job (in spite of having almost nothing to his name) — and then digging down deep to pull out a five-figure income in a matter of months.

It’s a great story filled with lessons for the observant marketer. I highly recommend you take a moment to read it here:

From Kitchen Table Business to Million-Dollar Buyout

-Ryan M. Healy

With a couple minor exceptions, I did not work last week.

I haven’t taken a week off since 2007 when I went to Florida for 10 days with my family.

It was definitely good to have some down time… relax the gray cells… and just go with the flow.

On the flip side, half the time I felt a bit lost.

As we drove to my parent’s house for dinner, I told my wife, “I feel lost without routine.”

“You are, honey!” she laughed.

I guess that’s the way it is with three young kids. When I’m at home, and I’m not working, my options are limited. I can try to read in the midst of chaos… join the chaos (play with the kids)… or work.

The work is just a different kind of work. It’s doing dishes and changing diapers instead of typing words.

And after a while, I’m literally compelled to do something productive. That’s why I finally wrote a new blog post on Saturday. I was just itching to get some of my ideas down on “paper.”

Starting today, I won’t feel so lost anymore. And I’m actually eager to jump back into our routines. That’s the beauty of vacation: it makes you appreciate the daily grind.

-Ryan M. Healy

I was watching a Broncos game the other night — the one in which they clobbered the Giants on Thanksgiving Day — and it occurred to me that the NFL is a heck of a lot smarter than me and you.

Here’s why.

After every play of the game, the sportscasters share the most arcane stats you’ve ever heard of. They know how long it’s been since specific scenarios have played out. They know when something has never happened in NFL history before.

Plus, they know rankings of players by position… passing, rushing, and scoring stats by quarter, game, and season… kickers’ accuracies and field goal percentages… and tons more.

The NFL is a well-oiled data machine that can spit out stats just nanoseconds after a new piece of information is added to its massive database.

Now, you know I don’t write about sports, so what does this have to do with anything?

Simply this: By knowing their stats, they’re a smarter organization (this goes for the NFL as well as each individual team franchise).

They know things.

This is one of the critical keys to success as a direct response marketer. You have to know your numbers.

Otherwise, how do you know when to go for it when you’re 4th down and inches? And how do you know when to run and when to pass?

You’ve just got to know this stuff.

In business lingo, you need to know:

• How many visitors you need to get a new customer.
• How much it costs to acquire a new customer.
• Which advertising mediums pay and which ones don’t.
• The average initial purchase a new customer makes.
• The life-time value of that customer.

And this is just scratching the surface.

I gotta confess, I’m nowhere near perfect when it comes to tracking my stats. But I’m trying to get better each and every day.

Because the better you know your numbers, the easier it will be to edge out your competition and thrive for the long-term.

-Ryan M. Healy