One of the most important principles I’ve found in business (and life) is:
Everything is a systems problem.
Let’s take John. His wife, Michelle, isn’t feeling appreciated. Sure, he could tell himself a story that the problem is him. That he’s just a bad and uncaring husband.
Or he could see the real issue is that his wife’s love language is words of affirmation — and she’s not hearing enough of those words from him.
Then he could build the habit (i.e. a system) of giving regular, heartfelt compliments. And showing his sincere gratitude that she’s in his life.
Another example. Let’s say Sarah’s business isn’t earning enough revenue. Sure, one option is to buy into the story that she’s “not cut out for this entrepreneur thing”.
Or instead, she could see the real issue is that she’s not having enough sales conversations. Then she could build a system that brings in enough new prospects to create those conversations day after day.
It’s easy to buy into the story that we (or our business) are broken. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.
When you dig in, you often find the real cause is a broken or nonexistent system.
A good system should be able to survive — and even thrive — despite the flaws of one individual.
Is your problem that your business is missing the latest whiz-bang marketing strategy?
Very unlikely.
More likely is that the problem is you haven’t created a system for showing up consistently.
A single YouTube video won’t do much for your business.
But 1,000 videos over a few years where you’ve optimized and improved with each one?
That’s game-changing.
Same with Facebook ads.
A $10/day campaign you run for 1 week is pointless.
But $10,000 spent consciously over several months, learning & refining along the way?
You’ll be miles ahead of everyone else.
It’s the difference between “I’m not good at Facebook ads” and “The data tells me this part isn’t working, let me experiment and improve the results”.
So much success in digital marketing (and business) comes from thinking like this.
Something didn’t work? No problem. Let’s take a look at the numbers, find the weak points, and test ways to make it better.
Step-by-step, we go from underperforming ads to a well-oiled machine that brings in new leads and customers like clockwork.
By the end, it’ll seem like magic to everyone else. They’ll wonder how in the world we got that working so well.
But you’ll know your system is the reason it works.
So here’s the question worth asking…
Where in your life or business right now are you focused on telling yourself a story, rather than focused on fixing the system?
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