How School Could Have Ruined You for Business
In a traditional education you are taught there is ONE right answer.
Remember multiple choice tests? You were told that “C” was the right answer and “A” “B” and “D” were wrong.
But what if there is a “E”, an “F” or even several hundred different possibilities?
Nope. According to school, there is always ONE right answer.
It makes grading tests a lot easier, plus it trains people to follow orders from bosses who always know the one right answer.
And it’s all bull****.
In business there can be MANY right answers. But since we are trained to think there is only one, we stop looking when we find the first answer that can work.
Never mind that there are another hundred solutions out there, and more than half of them are far better than the first one we found.
Just because you think you have the right answer doesn’t make it the best solution. Keep looking. KEEP LOOKING. Be open to solutions that are even better than the first one you discovered, because they are out there.
You use the same membership software that 80% of other marketers use. You stop looking for membership software because you already have the solution.
But another gal keeps looking for something better, and she finds a membership software that works twice as good at retaining subscribers. Not content to simply use it, she buys the fledgling little company for peanuts, teams up with a programmer and relaunches the software under their new name, making a fortune.
You’ve been told that emailing your list too often is bad and pisses people off and makes them unsubscribe. So you email once a week and you earn an okay living, never questioning if there is a better solution.
Some young kid hears the ‘rules’ about emailing too often but he wants money to come to him faster. He wants a better solution. So he sends out an email every six hours, 7 days per week. That’s 28 emails per week. 20% of his subscribers get mad and leave. 70% buy something every once in a while. And 10% buy every single thing he promotes because they love him and trust him. In three years he’s made enough money to buy a castle in Scotland. He found a better solution.
Business is ambiguous and even illogical. Rules aren’t just made to be broke; oftentimes they don’t even apply.
For example, you follow all the ‘rules’ to create a viral campaign that costs you a small fortune and it fails miserably. Someone else creates a stupid 20-second video that follows no rules of marketing or business, and they get a million hits in two days and sell $100,000 in product.
Here’s something they don’t teach you in school: Rules don’t apply to everyone. In fact, they only apply to those who choose
to follow them.
When you think in a certain way or when you grab the first solution you find, you are putting constraints on yourself that don’t need to be there.
If you have a hard time with the concept that there are no rules (we’re not talking laws here – that’s something else) then try this:
Rules are MEANT to be broken.
Read a handbook on how to do anything. Realize that the person who wrote it is giving you the rules they followed, the rules that worked for THEM. These rules may or may not work for you. You are a different person, likely in a different niche, having a different set of priorities and ideas and products and customers.
Their rules might be helpful but they are not gospel.
Rules are meant to be broken. I’m going to keep telling you that until it starts to sink in, because I realize I’m going against everything your teachers taught you.
Even your rules are mean to be broken. Your own rules, including ones you’re not even aware of, are a weird mash of your own experiences and beliefs. They come from your schooling, your parents, your friends, your beliefs and your experiences.
Break your own rules and see what happens. Contrary to what Sunday school teachers told you, the world will not stop spinning and the earth won’t swallow you in a fiery pit of sulfur.
You’ve been holding yourself back your entire life and it’s time to just STOP it. Question everything. Question why you do what you do, question your choices, question your methods, question your beliefs.
It’s a major shift in thinking that can take you from mediocre to massive success in a very short time.
And at the very least, it’s a lot more fun when you remove the constraints and start acting like rules are merely suggestions and not law.
Remember this and even tattoo it on the back of your hand: First solutions are seldom best solutions and rules are meant to be broken.
Irving
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