| By Sandi Hunter
Got any woodpeckers in your neighbourhood?
The next time you see a woodpecker watch him for a while. Think about how the woodpecker spends EVERY DAY of his life. The woodpecker must peck, peck, peck away all day and every day looking for food. It’s a matter of survival. The woodpecker doesn’t peck frantically for a few hours then take the afternoon off to snooze on a comfy branch. The woodpecker doesn’t peck frantically for one week straight to fill his tummy, then take a 2 day break snuggled up in his nest. Instead, he pecks away continually, rain or shine. If he doesn’t find food in one place he is off to the next tree to find a tasty morsel. He doesn’t give up when the first 3 trees have no bugs, throw his wings up in the air and say I quit! The woodpecker knows what you need to know: survival requires continuous pecking. In your case, your success is 100% dependent on your continuos pecking strategies for the survival of your business.
In my line of work I talk to marketers, entrepreneurs, and home business operators everyday. Just like in all walks of life you have all kinds of personalities from a variety of background and skills. The backgrounds are diverse but they all bring one thing in common to the table. Essentially a dogma of what they can (or are willing to) do TODAY to build their business.
I am always amazed at how people approach building their home business or business opportunity. Some will bite in like a dog on a bone and go hard for a month, then let go and I never hear from them again. Others study, analyze, learn, listen, think and digest but never get to the part of actually DOING anything. Some will find fault or make the most clever excuses for why they can’t work their business.
Then there are my favorites, I call these people, the woodpeckers.
These are the people that give 100% effort to building their business EVERY day. Like the woodpecker they peck away at the daily required tasks of building their business to call prospects, promptly reply to email, promote their business, take care of customers, generate leads, build their mailing list, generate traffic, network with others, solve problems as they happen, plan and prepare. If one strategy is not producing results they peck away trying to find a more productive outcome, or they peck at another approach, a new angle, a new offer, a new promotion, or new goals. They are not content to give up. They don’t try and accomplish everything in one day, they work daily, steadily, consistently pecking away to get to their goals. Like the woodpecker they know not to overextend themselves and bite off more of the worm than they can chew. Instead they peck away daily at the necessary tasks being sure to maintain a balance with other important aspects of their life.
The Woodpecker’s attitude is a realistic one, he has to search out food every day to survive and feed himself and his young. No one is going to show up at his nest everyday and hand over the bugs. The wise entrepreneur also has a realistic attitude, he or she may not want to do a certain mundane task but knows it is a requirement of building a successful business. He knows that he or she must do the work to earn the success. For our feathered friend the woodpecker, some days the worms may be juicier than others, sometimes the tasty worms are hard to come by and only the bitter bugs are available. Some months there will be more and larger bugs than other months, but the woodpecker (YOU) will have to just keep on pecking away. |