How To Change Your Game (Move Or Die Part 2)

After last week’s Move Or Die message, a reader wrote me this:

In other words… what are some practical examples of move or die in action?

So, game on.

If you know the life you want DEMANDS bold moves…

If you know it’s move or die time but don’t know WHAT or HOW…

Let’s get in the shit.

I’ll start with a personal example:

Death by a Thousand Google Campaigns

As I’ve shared before elsewhere, I was stuck in marketing purgatory for years.

I’d become very good at specific form of affiliate marketing called “direct linking.”

In a nutshell, I would create attention-grabbing ads, set them up on Google AdWords, and put my affiliate tracking link in the ad, so that when someone clicked on them, they would be taken straight to the vendor’s website. Any sales my ads generated would make me a commission.

It was elegantly simple.

And, for a time, it worked.

But what made it simple also made it indefensible to competition… and as thousands of new affiliates poured into the space, the cost of adverting rose with it.

Bottom line, it quickly came time to make a BOLD MOVE… and I faltered.

I *did* respond, but there was no boldness, no game-changing quality to it:

I tested MORE offers, MORE ads, MORE landing pages.

In other words… more of the same.

It was all within the same frame… all within the same linear groove of the direct linking affiliate model.

I stayed locked in that groove for years. I ran out of cash and ran up six-figures of debt…

…all because I was too chickenshit to drop the plow and quit a dead field… too chickenshit to change the game.

When I finally had the balls to make a REAL MOVE, by putting my advertising chops to work in a different model, as a product owner, the results were dramatic:

When I finally changed my game, I made more money that year than I had all the previous 4 years combined.

THAT’S the power of bold moves… and why it truly is MOVE OR DIE.

I don’t know your personal situation. I don’t now what frame you’re locked in.

But here are some ideas to prime your pump… to widen your eyes… to get your juices flowing:

For Authors:

* Radically simplify your message and writing
* or DEEPEN and DENSIFY your message and writing
* Write for a completely different audience
* Jump genres
* Put down the pen and pick up the mic: see if your love of language commands more attention as speaker than writer
* Quit waiting to “get discovered” by a brick and mortar publisher and self-publish

For Business Owners:

* Get more involved: if you’ve stepped back from daily operations, roll up your sleeves, jump back in, and find the choke-points
* or get LESS involved and stop micro-managing: automate or delegate yourself out of the mix
* Repackage your flagship product as a service, or your service as a product
* Sell the damn thing. If you hate your business, or if it’s killing you to run in, then cash out and move on
* Fire your 5 shittiest customers. Get rid of the low margin, high PITA clients that make you miserable
* If you hate your product or service… change that shit up. Create a massively stripped-down or jacked-up version… the perfect product (in beta form) you’ve always wanted to create and sell but never had the time or sack to

For Fitness Entrepreneurs:

* Double or triple your rates
* Radically narrow your niche: train just ex-military clients, or college athletes, or dads, or whoever makes sense to you
* Dispense with the gym and become the only trainer in your city who puts clients through the paces in the forest, swamp, or mountainside
* Create the most aggressive and generous referral program in your industry

For Painters:

* 10X the size of your next painting’s canvas (or go the opposite and paint 1/10th)
* Force yourself to complete your next painting in 1/10th the time and gauge the results
* OR take 10X LONGER and gauge the same
* Call 5 artists you admire and ask them for a new way to market your work
* Paint a new subject: switch from abstract to discernible subjects, or the other way around
* Try a new medium: beyond oil or acrylic or watercolor to blood, grass-stains, tar, whatever

For Marketers:

* Double the length of your marketing piece
* OR cut it’s length in half
* If all you’ve done is online marketing, take your online control and test it offline
* If all you’ve done is offline, turn your best marketing piece into an online sales letter and test it
* Test 5 new hooks a week until you find a game-changing new marketing angle
* Have your Jerry Maguire moment: say the things everyone’s thinking but no one has the balls to say, and use that declaration to elevate your company above your competitors

No matter how beat down you feel…

No matter how “out of options” you think you are…

There is ALWAYS a bold move you can make.

You have NOT hit rock bottom.

You have NOT earned the right to give up.

Get your ass off the couch, go to your desk, take a deep breath… and KILL business as usual.

If you want true change, then you must change your game entirely.

Move or die.

It’s time.

…

Bryan Ward is the founder of Third Way Man and author of the LIT Black Paper