Marketing Strategy Blog - Page 62

Ever heard of cutting off your nose to spite your face? We have all done it at some time in our lives, and others like me have done it far too many times that I don’t care to remember.

After watching House of Cards in what can only be described as a bedroom coma over one long weekend, I was deeply enthralled and quite fascinated to be honest, in the way each and every person conducted themselves.

The Australian Financial Review's front page headlines "$3b online advertising industry spooked" is in fact old news. Anyone in marketing knows that clients are paying for clicks that they shouldn't be, but for some absurd reason, everyone seems to be playing a blind eye to it.

On a regular basis, companies come to me and say that their website is getting thousands of unique visitors, but no sales inquiries. This could be for a number of reasons, or quite simply due to their SEO company manipulating Google Analytics to show results that don't exist.

I woke up this morning at 4am as I normally do, and decided to read the news online. Usually, I lay in bed for a few hours and think about the world, tossing and turning, hoping that by some miraculous occurence, my eyes will shut and I will sleep that extra hour.

What I read, shocked me. Top headline: "Joan Rivers Dies". Now, I did not know her, and I can't remember seeing much of her work, other than a snippet here and there, acknowledging her acid tongue jokes, or the fact that she has had a tad too much plastic surgery.

Why I was shocked is because this vivacious woman, with her wits about her, was fine one week, and had passed the next - almost without warning. You may say that she was 81 years old, and had a good innings, but she also was a very active woman with a lot of life to live and had a job doing live television when most would be resting in their rocking chairs.

Only weeks after getting over the reality that a childhood favourite, Robin Williams took his own life, I feel that death has all of a sudden become a part of my life - and to be honest I don't want a second of it.

It seems that I don't go a day without hearing about someone dying, which I believe kind of goes with the territory when you get a bit older. Whether it is someone you know, someone from afar or a friends uncle, cousin, brother, mother or companion. 

What I have come to realise is that in death, we somehow get defined in a way that is final. That's who we are- or more precisely were. The outpouring of grief from Robin Williams' friends and fans was heartfelt. My friends relative died last week, an important father figure to him, and when asked about it, my friend said "he was a gentleman". Steve Jobs, was defined as one of the world's greatest entrepreneurs - the person you would want to be in your top 5 people at the dinner table. 

How people see us in our final resting place is the way we are remembered and each of us have a different story to tell.

'Nothing would be done at all if a man waited until he could do it so well that noone could find a fault with it.' Cardinal Newman

The pursuit of perfection has been a struggle for me personally my entire life. What started out as a 'Virgo' trait, has led to a constant battle with striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance expectations of both myself and others. Going deeper then just a focus on personal life, my business has constantly been hindered by my inherent need for perfection, and I am not alone. There are many others out there that are exactly the same.

Entrepreneurs are renowned for certain types of behaviours including obsessive compulsive disorders, perfectionism, neuroticism - all often being the key reasons why things somethings don't go in the direction that they would have hoped. I call it self-sabotage, because noone is perfect and 80 percent is ok - yet trying telling that to my brain when it is on overload.

I learned earlier on in my business career that 80 percent had to do and by micro managing, nothing would ever get done, nor would the business grow. If only I could do everything myself, there would simply be no need for employees. Letting go and learning to adapt differently was singularly the best thing I could ever have done, and the only reason I have been able to grow an international business.

But from time to time, I fall prey to seeing things that are not done quite right, and having my little 'freak out' moment. 

When it comes to business, I desire the perfect marketing campaign, the perfect employee, and the perfect business - yet, that is impossible to achieve and you cannot place that kind of pressure and expectation on those around you - or you are bound to fail.

Let me preface this post by explaining that I’m Australian. Yet even though I’m Sydney born and bred, when it comes to business I gravitate towards American companies because I believe that Americans do it best.