I was on a prospect call with a very successful internet entrepreneur earlier in the year. He had multiple websites, all generating more passive income than my (very active) consulting business. I was excited to not only be able to help him, but also learn a thing or two to apply to my own business.
It was eye opening.
But not for the reason I thought it would be before the call.
What blew me away was how little he knew. For each part of his business, he was executing one main strategy that he had learned from someone else. But he didn’t know the other alternative ways he could be running each activity.
And that was why he was successful.
He found a few people that he trusted and followed their advice explicitly. When their advice worked, he moved on to other parts of his business that needed his attention.
Contrast this with me.
If I needed to sign up for an email provider, I would research all of my options, test out a few via their free trials, and know all the ins and outs of each. At the end of two weeks of testing, I would have made no progress on my business, but I would know the heck out of each email management service.
Analysis paralysis is real and it separates the high performers from the wannabes.
It’s a cliche, but cliches exist for a reason… Perfect really is the enemy of good.
Or my favorite way to phrase it, from the amazing Cult Of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis:
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
But what if you really don’t know what you’re supposed to do?
Do this: Find 3 people online that you respect and who are sharing great advice. Be sure you enjoy their writing as you will be reading A LOT of them.
Subscribe to get their blog posts by email and scour their websites for answer when you get stuck. These are your mentors.
DO NOT subscribe to any more sites. Between these 3 mentors, you should be able to find an answer to almost every business question you have. If they don’t explicitly write about, just look at what they are doing.
How does their autoresponder sequence work? Copy it.
What is their email subscriber freebie? Translate it into something you can giveaway.
How do they run their social media accounts? Follow their blueprint.
Who Are Your Digital Mentors?
I’d love to hear about your 3 mentors online.
Between all of the different people we learn from, we should be able to create a great list for others to borrow from. I’ll get things started with my current 3 digital mentors:
- Bryan Harris over at the VideoFruit blog
- Dan Norris from WPCurve and his (amazing) book, The 7 Day Startup
- Noah Kagan from OKDork and AppSumo.