Should you really be in this business?

I don't know... I personally see your point... sort of... but on the other hand, you're basically saying the same thing as "because your college degree didn't come from Harvard, or because you have none at all you shouldn't aspire to be successful because you are somehow less"

I agree that SOME people here have no business being in this business... and many people who are NOT here have no business either... I cleaned up messes that these kind of careless people left, before I moved and had to start over.

BUT... you don't have to know everything about everything about everything about marketing and business to succeed or to please a client. I think THINKING that you do is one of the reasons people DON'T succeed and only half ass offline.

The truth of the matter is, 80-90% of the clients we deal with don't understand what we do, and don't care to... we know more than they do, even if we only learnt WordPress or HTML last week.... and, if we are genuine and honest, we can still help them.

I think the problem, and the danger comes when people are dishonest, and not willing to learn at all, or own up to their mistakes.... or over promise and under deliver.

And for the record, I ask "stupid questions" all the time... but I am far from inept in any capacity... so I'm sure that the majority of others here fit a similar bill.

ETA: I outsource a lot of things too... but it's not because I can't do them, it's just because doing a lot of the things I outsource... is not the best use of my time... I don't WANT to be a commodity provider, there are people who can do those things much better than I can, in half the time....even if I sat through every course known to man...

In economics, if I remember right, that a principle called specialization, and it's the same reason... or part of the same reason why so much stuff is made in China vs. the West.

I want to be a consultant, who helps... as you indicated... but yes, I think the people who don't or can't approach it this way have the odds stacked against them for various reasons.

I've got to say i do agree with you in some aspects but not all. I've only just started taking action after reading and learnign for almost a couple of years. I learned how to do the marketing side of things and (like you) i use white label or outsource the rest. So i don't agree that if people are asking basic questions that you should just cut them down and tell them to do something else.

At the same time though, there are some people that will NEVER succeed, be it because they never take action or just because they are better at design/programming/etc than speaking to people and getting sales. The basic fact of the matter is that some people just can't sell.

Its like a double edged sword - whichever way you swing it you're going to hurt someone, whether thats telling a prospective marketer that they will never succeed when they actually could or whether thats telling someone they can succeed in marketing when they really never stand a chance.

Your exactly right. Most of the stuff people talk about on here, or ask about is almost pathetic.

This is why I barely spend any time here anymore. If you want to become great, do you hang out with people who are below average? or do you steer clear of them and hang around with people making money?

Questions like: "what are the best services to offer offline businesses?"

It begs the questions: "If you don't know how to help them, why offer anything?"

I firmly believe that the people who come from the affiliate/infoproduct background have much more success offline than people who just jump into offline. The affiliate/info guys generally know copy-writing and marketing. They can sell.

Cheers for the replies and ntaking the thread in the right spirit.

I am mainly thinking of the threads (tho i dont want to knock people who do them as one offs) that ask something like ' i got a meeting with XYZ industry business, what can i do for them , or what ideas do you have i can offer them (but they dont give their own ideas that theyve already thought of to A) mean we dont have to type them only for them to say 'yeh i already thought of that' and B) show that they have already put some thought into the deal and arent just stealing others ideas

IMO surely you should already know maybe 10-20 things you can do for say a restaurant, hotel, chiro, dentist, manufacturer etc etc before youve even decided to start targetting them, (and that doesnt mean SEO, Mobile,Video etc ,it means specific strategies within that business/industry utilising one or more method).

I agree many business owners dont understand the intricacies of what we offer, they do mostly understand they want more leads and clients and profits, and thats what we should be offering, but if youre learning as you go along (and Im not saying thats bad) you have to have things in place to ensure you dont accidentally feck up someone elses business .

I just dont see much proof that many people offering this service have a good number of strategies for various businesses , methods and clientelle, but that they do try to push the clients in the direction of what they specialise in or want to offer rather than what the clients business actually needs now.

I guess thats a big strength for not doing anything ourselves here , we dont have any loyalty to a particular service, its what the business would benefit from within the overall longer term strategies that we deliver, we dont get unintentionally dragged into offering or focussing on only one or two lead generation techniques.