This evening I attended a VIP event for a group of owners of membership businesses.
For most of the day today, we received guidance on ways that we can improve our membership businesses.
The VIP event was held at a golf driving range.
I live in North Carolina, which I’ve been told has some of the best golf courses in the country.
I wouldn’t know as I never played enough golf to recognize the enjoyment of golf.
Most days that I spent on the golf links were an exercise of frustration.
The last time I played golf, I remember thinking, “I don’t understand why the gold ball won’t go where I want it to go.”
This last statement is a perfect illustration of why I’m a complete idiot when it comes to golf.
If I were more objective about my golf skill level, I would recognize that every time I swing a club or iron, the ball is going where it is going because that is where I hit the ball.
The reason why I’m not a good golf player is because I don’t play golf.
I have never taken a golf lesson.
The few times I’ve played golf, I grab my golf clubs and start swinging.
A couple of times with each outing I swing the golf club and miss the ball completely.
Tonight’s outing was a bit different as I allowed myself to relax and let the golf iron do most of the work.
It was amazing how much better I hit the golf ball when I relaxed and went with the flow.
I share my experience playing golf to illustrate some of the faulty thinking that has plagued me in the past.
If I’m honest, I still am challenged with the thinking that caused me to swear of chasing a little white ball finally.
For some reason, when I first started to play golf, I thought that I should be a good golf player.
Why I had this irrational belief in my predestined golf superiority is still a mystery to me.
What in the world makes me think that I would be good at playing golf when I had never played golf before.
Surely, I had heard from people before the amount of time they devoted to becoming good at golf.
It’s not logical to think that because I have mastery in one area of my life that I should have mastery in a new area of my life when I am just a beginner at the new area of my life.
It’s been important for me to realize that to gain mastery, I must be willing to hone my craft and do things over and over and over and over and over again.
Many years ago, when I prepared tax returns, I remember talking with someone who stated that she had prepared her tax returns.
She commented further that it was easier for her to prepare her tax returns that year than it had been to prepare her tax returns the prior year.
I smiled and said to her, “Just imagine how good you would be if you prepared a couple of hundred tax returns. You would be a master tax return preparer.”
Last month I had a mastermind meeting with a few other business owners, and we shared with each other the areas of our businesses that we were having successes and the areas where we were facing challenges.
When it was my turn to share where I was with my business, I went through my prepared presentation.
I shared some of the ways I measured my results.
Then I finished speaking and listened to each of my colleagues share their feedback with me.
I was surprised when I started receiving the feedback.
Each person had a distinct perspective.
Each person spoke about things that I hadn’t even thought about.
It literally was mind-boggling to me that they were sharing valuable information with me that I hadn’t even considered.
What’s more, there were a few items that I had presented that were vastly inferior to the feedback I received from my colleagues.
Every person has a vastly different perspective.
While I had done a good job and working on my business, there were certain items where I had completely missed the boat.
Specifically, I talked about where I’m currently struggling with my marketing.
Over the past few months, I’ve devoted considerable time, money and resources to online marketing.
However, at present, I’m still not getting satisfactory results.
As much as I’d like better results, I have continually repeated to myself that I’m a beginner with online marketing, and beginners at anything usually are not good.
Such has been the case with me.
I would love to have tremendous overnight success results now.
Who would love to have great success at their first outing?
If success worked that way, everyone would be successful.
Success is the reward of those that persist and constantly strive for mastery.
This experience of receiving feedback from my mastermind ground has helped me realize that I will be much more successful by letting my market tell me what they want and need.
I’ve allowed myself to overthink quite a few things in my marketing in the last few months that it has led me to a great deal of overwhelm and confusion.
I was sharing with someone today my content publishing schedule.
He asked me the following question, “Have you listened to your audience.”
I was a bit surprised by the question and paused while I thought about how to respond.
My initial reaction was, “I’ve got this all figured out. I’m doing my content creation because this is what’s important.”
As I just wrote those words, I realize that I’m a fool.
I can’t have it all figured out.
The person that I was talking with has been much more successful with his online business than I have been with my online business.
I say that not to compare myself to him.
Rather I make that statement to step back from my habitual thought of thinking I have it all figured out.
I don’t have it all figured out.
Why in the world would I think I should have it all figured out.
I’d be much better served and would be much more successful in my current endeavor if I just stopped with my cyclical approach of doing the same thing over and over and over again while not receiving any results.
I would be better served if I found a master and became the student.
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