Your E-Business Strategy: Is It Love ... Or Fear?

by Steve Shaw

Published on this site: February 4th, 2004

I read recently that every human thought originates from either love or fear. The more I thought about it, the more true it became. I began to apply it to business - after all, every business success or failure originates ultimately from human thought. This article examines the effects that love or fear can have on your e-business - is it love, or is it fear, that dominates the way you do business online?

If it's fear, you fear you're missing the 'one big thing', and so you attempt to try absolutely everything in case that's the thing you're missing. You read every email that comes in promising business success, and attempt to follow what they suggest.

The only problem is you are attempting to follow several strategies at once, but there's only one of you and not enough hours in the day. You end up barely touching the surface of each strategy, and you become disillusioned and despondent. You tell everyone who will listen that everything you have tried simply doesn't work, and that the Internet is a money-making myth.

You are constantly fearful of your competition. You worry they are doing more business than you, that their offer is better than yours, that they will drive you out of business. You try to copy them, and emulate their style, but somehow it just doesn't work and your heart isn't in it. You feel like you're always following some way behind, rather than out in front, leading the pack.

You have no idea where your sales are coming from, and when you have a couple of 'dry days' with no sales at all, you're panic stricken, and all you can think about is business failure. You've been running your business blind, you have no idea what's been working well and what hasn't, so you have no foundation on which to base your decision making, and no faith that what you are doing is working.

You begin to feel unfulfilled, over-worked, over-stressed, and you can feel yourself burning out. The motivation for your business begins to disappear, and you soon end up with no business.

Instead, if it's love, you concentrate on Strategy A fully, before even considering B or C. You do your homework first - you read all the literature, you know it's been very successful for many people, and you believe you can do it too. You studiously, deliberately and methodically follow the strategy. Rather than diluting your energy by pouring it into many different moulds, you pour all of it into this one, persistently and with considerable dedication.

You don't see much happening at first, but you still have faith, and you re-examine the strategy to ensure you are maximizing the possible outcome. Over time, you begin to see the positive results. This reinforces your energy and motivation, and increases the beneficial effects you experience.

You tell everyone who will listen how well it works for you - others try it too, and begin to see positive results for their own businesses.

You look for ways in which you can work with your competition for mutual benefit. You think about a JV, and approach your competition with it, even ensuring that the benefits for them outweigh your own. Your competition can see how much benefit your proposal could be for both parties and agree to it. The end result is a highly positive outcome for both sides, and you agree to work more closely together in future.

You concentrate on your own USP, and inject your business with a sense of your own style, confidence, and overall business strategy. You see others beginning to emulate you, which you take as a token of admiration, boosting your self-esteem, and thereby further improving the way you do business. You find yourself leading the marketplace.

You have a couple of dry days, but you know that occasionally this happens for whatever reason, that your targeted traffic comes from multiple sources, which show excellent conversion rates. Instead of fearing business failure, you quickly check everything is okay with your merchant account or payment processor and check your site is functioning normally, and you know sales will pick up normally again very soon. You concentrate your energies instead into new avenues of promotion.

Instead of running your business on fear, and consequently witnessing it shrivelling up and dying, you run it on love - you have a passion for what you do, you always take positive action, and the more successful you become, the more it fires that passion.

Your business expands and becomes more successful. And the positive energy from your own business begins to rub off on others.

Can you see how a simple change in approach could transform your business?

Steve Shaw develops software and systems for effective e-marketing. For example, his PopUpMaster Pro software allows you to add popups to your web site that beat the popup blockers, and vastly improve your response rates. For more information please go to http://popupmaster.com.