Why you won't be successful in offline marketing

I'm just going to put it right out on the table (since when do I pull any punches anyway?).

There is one huge reason why you will not be successful in offline marketing.

It's not about not knowing all sorts of techniques.

It's not because you can't slick talk someone into a deal.

It's because you aren't passionate about what you're doing.

You aren't on fire about helping a business owner grow their own business.

You see this business as an easy way to score some cash without actually trying to work all that hard.

You're in it for a few bucks, and that's it. You're not there for the long haul.

Heck, there was even a topic from someone a while back who had the guts to admit that they didn't want to be in it for the long haul... they just wanted to score a few bucks and move on. At least he had the honesty to admit that.

But without the real passion, there's nothing there to drive you through the lean times... the sales troughs... the tough parts of building a business - things like tight cash flow... cost overruns... failed delivery from outsourced resources... fried hard drives with no backups... you know... all the friction that comes along with running a real business (and living life).

If it's not fueled by passion, then it just becomes another job.

And unfortunately, that's exactly what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs.

They might start out with the passion and fire... but are quickly pulled from being the visionary into the role of babysitter. Operations management is a much different animal than thought leadership and evangelism. It's a friction-laden business with lots of frustration and mundane systems that just do the same thing over and over... day in and day out.

Sure, those systems are extremely important. You cannot build a sustainable business without them. But failing to account for who is actually going to run those systems is a major hurdle as you build your business... and eventually becomes a bucket of water that will douse the fire in many passionate entrepreneurs.

You might be winning business by undercutting competition's pricing. You might be satisfied on tighter margins because you're doing a bunch of the work. You might eventually even think that you're super successful because you eventually just manage the whole thing instead of doing all the tactical work. But if you're not actually profitable enough to hire operations managers, the time you need to spend researching your craft and fueling the fires as the passionate visionary will get tighter and tighter.

So you see... even if you do start out with a blazing bonfire of passion and vigor... how you build your business can eventually dampen the flame.

And if you don't really start out with that passion to begin with?

Well... good luck with that.