Two nights ago I finally finished the 40-page pamphlet I’d been reading for three months, titled Leading With Your Head. It’s about the use of misdirection in magic. It ends with this:
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Tape your performances in front of an audience (either audio or video). Sit down and take notes. What works best for the audience? What doesn’t work (that you thought would)? Is there dead time you can eliminate? What needs to be improved? Keep the material that works, and concentrate on improving the weaknesses. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. It’s simply an excuse to avoid addressing more serious problems. Rehearse your improvements, then repeat the whole process again.
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It’s popular advice to say, work on your business, not in it.
The typical meaning of this is to delegate, build systems, automate the work. I’m sure that’s fine.
But there are ways of making a living — like my own — that are not about hiring and managing other people, not about scaling endlessly, and certainly not about automation. After all, what’s the sense in getting a magic-performing robot to go on stage and perform your magic show for you — if performing magic is what you like to do?
“Work on your business, not in it” is good advice. But in my personal case, I like the meaning above, the one from Leading With Your Head.
Plan and reflect, in addition to performing. It makes you better at what you like to do, and is in fact fun and enjoyable in itself, at least in my experience. And in my experience, it can be profitable too.
Last June 9th, I did an instance of this kind of working on my business. I opened up a text file on my computer and made a list, “10 things I’ve learned to do well over the past year.”
Item no. 2 on the list was “2. write [what I later came to call Most Valuable] emails.”
A couple weeks later, because of that small observation, I created a live training about Most Valuable Emails.
A month later, based on the surprising sales of the swipe file of Most Valuable Emails I offered at the end of the live training, I decided to create a standalone Most Valuable Email course.
I was hesitant — I figured anybody interested had already seen my presentation and wouldn’t buy. But again, I was surprised.
4.7% of my list bought the Most Valuable Email course during the launch. And interest hasn’t dropped off since, but has in fact gone up.
To date, 5.3% of my list has bought Most Valuable Email, though my list has grown by over 41% since last September, when I first launched the MVE course.
Great, right? — when you look at it from the perspective of how a typical info product sells. 2% or 3% of a qualified list is considered good.
But on the other hand, it also means 94.7% of my list has not yet bought Most Valuable Email.
Perhaps this includes you too.
There are many legit reasons why you might not want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list some of them right in the deck copy of the sales page.
On the other hand, there are also several legit reasons why you might want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list those in the deck copy as well.
In case you’d like to read that, and see and decide for yourself whether Most Valuable Email could be most valuable for you too, take a look here: