Growing Your Business with Marketing, Week 21: Reasons this week worked

This is Week 21 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday.

Happy summer, everyone! (I know, right? How the hell did that happen!? One day at a time, of course, just like our marketing or anything else gets done…or doesn’t, sometimes.)

This was the first fun week I’ve had since getting sick over a month ago. Because I’m all about post-game analysis—mostly because I have gotten kind of tired of repeating the same mistakes, and also because, as I approach 50, I’m more and more aware of how little time I may have left—I spent some time analyzing why. Since this week is about NEWSLETTERS for anyone working the Veteran’s Calendar, I’ve included a bonus-extra analysis about my most successful newsletter mailing to date.

Hopefully, the lessons I’ve come away with will be useful to you on your own marketing (and other) journey.Reason #1: I felt good

Yes, I can work through pain or fatigue just like anyone else. But I am happier, more productive and more delightful to be around (hence, a better ad for me and my services) when I am healthy. My ill health forced me to sleep extra-long hours for a few weeks; now I’m knocking off and getting to bed in time to get 8 hours, no matter what. I get that it may not be an option for those of you with young children, but for me, especially at my age, sleep is the number one secret to my success. Crazy, but hey—at least it’s FREE.

What’s not free but equally important is eating well. Not richly, but well. Now that I’m back on the special diet to control my Crohn’s I’m feeling much more energetic. This does require me taking time out of each day to prepare food (the diet, while really good for you, is notoriously labor-intensive), but I think I’m making up for it in both quantity of usable work time and quality of the thinking I get during it.

Finally, as part of my new & improved attitude towards work/life balance,
I almost treated the weekend like an actual weekend. Which is to say, yeah, I worked some, but only on stuff I wanted to and only for half-days.

Reason #2: I was doing stuff I loved, work-wise

I got to do another one of my webinars on marketing with social media, which I love doing almost as much as talking about it live and in-person. The further I get away from design, the more certain I am I made the right move. And my own work in consulting, writing and speaking continues to evolve as I discover what I’m best at and what people actually need and want to hire me for. Deidre talked about this in last week’s post, and I think it’s truer than most of us want to think about most of the time. Life is about fluidity and change, not stasis. Yes, it’s all supported by a thorough understanding of our own fixed givens, or at least of values that change less frequently or quickly, but ya gotta keep moving forward.

Reason #3: I challenged myself a wee bit

I didn’t make my cold calls BUT…I made some terrifying (for me) calls—actual CALLS on the actual TELEPHONE—trying to put together more consulting work while I’m in Chicago this July. I may write a bigger post about my preconceived notions going into the calls and how wrong wrong wrong I was about them, but the topline is this: I’m much closer to having a couple of days of work, plus more in the future, and nobody hates me for asking.

I also started making fundraising calls on behalf of PresentationCamp LA, the unconference Cliff Atkinson, Lisa Braithwaite and a few other presentation nerds are getting off the ground. (It’s all day June 20 at BLANKSPACES, it’s only $10, and it’s gonna be AWESOME—if you’re in L.A. or can make the trip, get your tickets now, or check out our planning wiki.)

Now, if there’s one thing I hate even more than cold calling it’s calling asking people for money. But I started by talking to a couple of product evangalist friends (whose products I love and evangalize all the time, anyway)—Tara Anderson of Lijit and Jean MacDonald of TextExpander—was totally upfront about using this as an opportunity to connect, and ended up by having terrific chats (something I never do, since I’m so anti-phone) and maybe scoring a bit of dough for a great community project. I also had a terrific conversation with my new best friend from MindJet, Michael Deutch, and reconnected with one of my idols, Nancy Duarte, via email and Twitter.

Bonus Lesson: Stuff I learned about my newsletter that might help you

I’ve been sending out my newsletter for just over two years now (hey! second anniversary!), and I’ve learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work in that time. My open rates have been consistently in the 50-55% range since leveling off in February of 2008 (before then, it was a small list mostly friends and a much higher rate, probably out of curiosity as anything else), and I could always count on a certain amount of click-throughs for some stuff—usually the very first “useful” link—but I was having trouble getting people to forward it.

This past month, I did two things:

1. I changed the call to action, making it snappier, shorter and more “me” (i.e., making it more obvious without, I hoped, making it appreciably more obnoxious)
2. I nestled it into a small list of other quickie, possible “items of interest” at the end of the main article

Result? Four times more forwards than any newsletter campaign to date! Just for making it obvious what I was asking for. D’oh!

So what does all this add up to?

The past month has been a real source of frustration for me on a lot of levels—I wasn’t able to do half of what I normally want or even don’t want to do—but it’s also been a rich source of learning, and I’m determined to carry on what I’ve perceived to be the most important lessons as I move forward into a new and hopefully more healthfully energetic month…or year…or balance of a lifetime, however long that may turn out to be.

And however long it is, it’s gonna be a helluva lot more enjoyable if I’m in reasonably good health for the bulk of it!