When To Work Hard, And When To Work Smart – Concrete Examples

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Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘work smart, not hard’?

Wonder what genius came up with that one?

The idea that there is some ‘secret strategy’ guaranteed to make you riches without any real effort is ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as the idea that if you just work hard enough (even if you’re doing the wrong thing) you’ll inevitably find success as well.

Therefore, ask yourself – should you work smart or hard?

The answer, put simply, is both. Not only do you need to have the right strategy in place, but you have to back it up with enough effort and hours to execute that strategy to its full potential.

However, there’s different times to focus on working smart vs. working hard. In this article, I intend to highlight some of these examples. This way, you can structure your work days in a way that truly maximizes your results.

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Repeat After Me: I Will Never Compete On Price

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What makes your company unique? Why do people buy from you?

In business, you can typically offer two of these three things, if you work hard:

  • A high quality product or service.
  • An impressive overall shopping experience, with great customer service all around.
  • A low price.

However, you can not realistically offer all three of these at the same time. Nor should you try to.

If your goal is to actually build a large, profitable company, competing on price is not only incredibly challenging, but it offers the highest amount of risk for the lowest reward. It is a loser’s game, and by simply adjusting your strategy, you can position yourself to do far better while practically ignoring price completely.

In this article, we’re going to make clear why you should rarely, if ever try to compete on price, and cover actionable strategies to take instead.

Let’s get to it!

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Data Scraping For Small Businesses: Benefits, Tips, And How To Get Started

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You do not need to own a large company to benefit immensely from the power of data scraping.

While large organizations are already collecting and analyzing insanely large amounts of data, data scraping / mining is not only reserved for those with large budgets, powerful computers, and large research teams.

In fact, with the right frame of mind, data scraping has enormous benefits for small businesses as well.

The difference between good marketers and great marketers is how they effectively utilize data to make marketing decisions. While this certainly starts with the data we collect from our own website, our visitors, and our customers, it does not have to stop there.

With the vast amount of data available online, it’s possible to make use of data that’s available publicly on other people’s websites as well. Both collecting and utilizing it are a lot easier than most entrepreneurs think.

In this article, I intend to show you how small business owners like yourself can utilize data scraping to help you make more money from your business. Showing you the benefits that data mining can offer even for very small companies, and how to begin scraping and organizing data straight away.

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7 Branding Mistakes That Will Destroy Your Company

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Your brand is fragile.

It is difficult to build up – taking months or years to really connect with a person’s mind. You can get in front of a consumer hundreds of times, invest large amounts of money, and endless hours of work to reach a point where that person finally trusts you, and aligns themselves with what you stand for.

It requires a well thought out strategy and careful execution. Pull it off, and you’ll cultivate raging fans, happy to throw money at you – even if you’re more expensive than your competitors.

Do it wrong however, and you can alienate your audience – even turning once-passionate fans into people that begin to dislike you, and everything you stand for.

Brands take a long time to build up, but they can very quickly be destroyed. While no one thing will take you down, a pattern of bad behavior can quickly ruin the credibility and image you’ve worked so hard to build up.

On the opposite end, a strong brand can pay dividends for life – making every facet of marketing more effective going forward.

In this article, we’ll go over key branding mistakes you must avoid if you want to keep people on your side. By developing a framework and keeping these principals in mind, you ensure that the fans you cultivate remain fans forever – making new fans become even more valuable.

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Entrepreneurs: Quit Wasting Your Time And Money Obsessing Over These 5 Things

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How much more could you get done if you were working at 100% productivity, every second you’re building your company?

The truth is, almost nobody actually works as effectively as they could be. This is just as true for the big corporate CEO as it is for a first-time small business owner.

In every company, there is waste. This is after all, human nature. Nobody is completely efficient all of the time, and you certainly don’t have to be in order to succeed.

However, we all want to get everything that we possibly can out of each day. Out of our budgets. Out of our employees, if we have any. This means that we need to constantly take note of what’s actually delivering results, and what we’re spending too much time and money worrying about.

By simply changing a few key actions each day and honing in on what truly matters, you can waste less resources on things that do not move the needle, and make sure that your time and money is put to its best use.

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Multiple Failed Businesses? Here’s What To Do Differently Next Time

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There is only one thing more frustrating than pouring your heart and soul into a business, only to see it fail.

Doing it several times.

Launching one venture after another, truly giving it your all, only to ultimately realize that its going nowhere.

Each time this happens, you begin to feel worse and worse about this whole entrepreneurship thing. It seems so far out of reach, and you have no idea what could possibly be going wrong so many times. Why it appears so easy to everyone else, but regardless of how hard you work, you just can’t seem to pull it off.

Maybe, you even start believing that you’ve been lied to, and this is all a huge scam.

Don’t worry.

I know how this feels, because it’s something I went through myself. It took me years before I began attaining any success at all, and I have had a large number of failures between them.

The fact of the matter is, even if you do everything right, and you have a solid strategy in place, things still may not work out.

Other times, the shortcomings may be caused by your mindset – a lack of motivation, poor time management skills, or unconsciously setting mental hurdles that make your entrepreneurial journey more difficult.

If any of this sounds like it applies to you, read on – this may be one of the most important articles you’ve come across. We’re going to analyze the root causes of business failures in more detail, and develop a plan that will ensure with absolute certainty that you will achieve success with future ventures.

Let’s begin, with the first step.

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