An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Let’s discuss more about lesson of marketing from fishing. From the last post, we mentioned about choosing the right pond. A pond where you can find fish.

Is it true that you can surely get your fish as long as you find the right pond? The answer is NO! Ok, I only have a few fishing experiences, still a newbie in fishing but I ever experience zero fish for the whole night. You may ask: maybe there’s no fish there. If there’s really no fish in that pond, I won’t feel bad. But my three other friends caught at least ten fishes that night, and I got zero; that sucks.

Casting the line into the right pond is the start of your marketing steps. The rest of the steps takes skills and planned moves. Like fishing, from the time the fish bite your bait to bringing the fish up takes skills. And every move is planned.

If you start to reel in the moment you feel a fish bite your bait, the fish will escape. In marketing, when the prospect take your bait, come to you; and you want to do a closing right away, it will scare them away. This is call closing too early. You try to close when the prospect is not ready.

On the other hand, if you reel in too late, the fish would have eaten the whole bait and escape as well. Then you lose your bait and the fish. So if your prospect comes, you give and give; when your prospect gotten enough from you, they will run.

It’s all about timing. You allow the fish to bite for a while, maybe drag the line away from you. When you find that it’s time, reel in fast to have a hooked on the fish. This is called closing at the correct time. Giving them enough, but not enough for them to run.

Another distinction is fighting with the hooked fish. When the fish is hooked, it will try to escape. It will want to swim away, so it will create tension on your line. If you fight it by pulling all the way, the line will break, then you lost the fish. Some salespeople, do the same thing; although face with objections, they continue to pull until the line breaks. This is what some called hard sell, it turns people off.

To successful fight with the fish, the pull and release method should be used. You pulled it in, then you let it run. You pulled again, and let it run again. Then you do a final pull to get the fish out of the water. In marketing, you asked and you let your prospect talked. Ask again, let them talked again. Then you ask the last time.

Hope this add value to you.
I will have to fish a few more times to get more distinction about marketing from fishing.

For the past 3 weeks, I have learned so much about marketing that I believed I know more than any marketing graduates out there. There’s one thing I am sure of – you can’t learn effective marketing from textbooks.

Textbook will not teach you where to find your prospects. Textbooks teach you marketing to the masses, shows you marketing that requires millions of dollars. But what if you run a small business and funds are limited. You can only afford to invest thousands or even hundreds of dollars in marketing. What can you do?

I took up fishing in the last 2 months, and I found 2 simple business lessons through fishing.

Lesson 1. Go to the place where there are lots of fishes.

Lesson 2. Ensure those fishes want your bait.

I did fish at a place where there are only a few fishes in the pond. My bait is fresh, but no fishes caught that night. I also learned that some fish don’t eat some bait.

When it comes to marketing, the same principles apply. Do your marketing where there are lots of prospects, and ensure they want what you are offering.

The first advertisement I placed 3 weeks ago gave me 1 response. Horrible result! Why? Because I placed at the place where fishes don’t go. However, you wouldn’t know whether there will be fishes until you fish at that location once.

Immediately, I changed strategy. I look for ponds where there are lots of fishes. Not only that, they are the kind of fish that I want. Lots of fishes is one thing, but a particular kind of fish is another. You can have big crowd but they are not eating your bait, then your marketing failed. You have to find prospects who want to what you offered.

Identify who will want your product / service. In today’s world, you can’t offer to anyone. There’s only a group of people who are suitable to have your product/service. Find out who are they, and where they usually swim.

After the first advertisement, I started to find places where my prospect are gathering. Throw in the bait and the marketing process start. The rest of the marketing process requires other skills and preparation. But the first step is to identify where your fishes are.

Challenge, disappointment, joy, excited, anger, learning, sadness, lost, happy, focus, perturbate visited me in the past 3 weeks. I’ve experience almost all kinds of emotion a human being can experience in the past 3 weeks.

Most importantly, I had a steep gradient kind of learning experience. It was pretty steep that there was some price to pay. Yes, I had many learning experiences throughout my life but most of them lasted a day, and I moved on. This time it went on for weeks, and there is a price to pay.

Nevertheless, I had gain tremendous experiences in the past weeks. I gained a huge amount of knowledge through all those mistakes I’ve made. Those mistakes broke me. I was destroyed, devastated. I lost confidence.

Today, when I woke up, I was different. I am filled with confident again. After bringing all those mistakes together, turning them into learning experiences, I am stronger now. Not many in the world has the courage to do what I do which means not many has that kind of experience that I had now.

With the newly acquired knowledge and experiences, how can I become worse? Like what the late Buckminster Fuller said, “You never learn less.” Especially in the past 3 weeks, I was learning at an accelerated speed. Last 3 weeks I probably learned what some people learned in 3 years.

In my next post, I’ll share about what are the lessons I’ve learned.

For those of you who followed this blog, you will probably remember about the last post about the Youth Success Boot Camp Preview.

Last Saturday,we had our first preview, and it was a awesome. We had 4 registered for the Boot Camp, and 1 pending. I felt it was a great start.

I am really blessed that I found my path in life. I also felt blessed to possess the skill and knowledge to add value to our younger generation. Even after the preview, some parents actually stayed around to chat with us, wanting to find out how they can further help their child. This simple gesture made me realize that running this Boot Camp is definitely what I have to do for a long time.

I also want to give credit to the awesome team. From handling the calls to the paper work, everything is handled with a flow. Seriously, without them this preview is not even possible. Thanks Jean, Jeffery and Andi for making this possible.

Today, Jean received an encouraging email from one of the parents who registered their child. This is what she wrote:

From: CXXXXXXX
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 10:05 AM
To: Jean Hoo, Actionpreneur P/L
Subject: Re: Reminder: seminar on 30 May 09 (sat) at 10.30am

Thanks & Rgds

If you want to find out when is the next seminar, please visit Youth Success Boot Camp.

In the meantime, I wish you all the best in whatever you do.