Doug McIsaac

Marketing has changed - Have you changed your marketing?

Recent Posts

There are very few people I know who are as knowledgeable about strategic business planning as Doug McIsaac. He's a very talented, "under the radar" expert who has a natural knack for finding simple strategies to dramatically increase your profits. Doug is my go to guy for innovative Internet Marketing ideas and I think he's crazy for sharing all of his secrets.

Ron Douglas
TrafficSage.com
RecipeSecrets.Net"

 

 

You are here: Home / Archives for Doug Mcisaac

What I learned from Shoemaker Tonight

by

I learned a lesson from a video of Shoemaker tonight. I’ll embed it at the end of this post so you can learn from it too.

The lesson I learned is that the biggest mistake of beginning bloggers is that they try to talk about subjects that they aren’t passionate about, they remove their unique personality from their writing and are unwilling to share about who they are.

I realized that I had made that mistake. My passion is building businesses; both my own businesses and helping entrepreneur’s build their businesses. In my rush to get content I’ve written quite a bit about online marketing.  Which I know a fair deal about, but I have 17 years of running my own businesses and I need to talk about that.

I need to talk about how you start a business with $6,000 and grow it to 30 employees and a multi-million dollar payroll. The struggles and mistakes that were made along the way.

I need to talk about finding opportunity, even when everyone only sees failure.

I need to talk about how a 9 person company that truly didn’t know where next month’s payroll was coming from can negotiate an 8 figure deal with a Fortune 50 company and the steps it takes to get to that table.

I need to talk about managing customers and their expectations.

I need to talk how almost every personal issue in business ultimately comes down to egos and how ego can cause people to make rash decisions that ultimately destroy a business.

I need to talk about losing everything and how sometimes that’s the best thing that could happen to you.

Yes, from now on I will talk about things that I know better than anyone else and am more passionate about.

Doug

Seth Godin, Blue Sweater and Our Shrinking World

by

In Seth Godin’s post today, How Big is Your World, he discusses how much our world is shrinking and introduces us to Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund and her book the Blue Sweater.

He raises good questions for all of us to ask ourselves, How much are we involved in the world? Are we actively doing something to help or are simply standing by, getting excited about the “issue of the day” and going on with our lives? We all need to take time out of our busy days and really stop and ask ourselves what we can do today to make the world a better place.

Jacqueline (one of my favorite names BTW) has experienced poverty in Africa and wrote what sounds like an amazing book about her experiences as a naive banker entering Africa and started the Acumen fund to build businesses to help fight poverty.

I believe that the grassroots, entrepreneurial approach is the only approach that works long-term to both stabilize and enrich a nation. Providing these entrepreneurs with access to training and capital will help us get past the corruption of their governments and the politics of the NGOs. I applaud the Acumen fund for their efforts.

To do my part for our shrinking world I’ve joined up with a group of social marketers, Social Traffic in a Grass Roots effort to enhance social awareness and promote Earth Day Birthday events. Our goals are to raise awareness about our environment,  and use social marketing to enhance a good cause. We all need to give back with the skills that we have.

Doug
dnm.edbd

Ethics and Building Your Online Business

by

In Seth Godin’s post today he touched on ethics in our increasingly transparent world. I’ve had issues for years with people who believe that “business is Business” and that they can be unethical in their business dealings and still be ethical.

One of my favorite books on this issue was “There’s no Such Thing as Business Ethics” by John C. Maxwell. Several people commented when they saw the title because many people believe that you can live your life in two parts. Then I had to explain to them that the point of the books was that there are only ethics, period. There aren’t personal ethics and business ethics.

Now with the increasing transparency of the internet it is becoming harder for people to hide:

“The Net enlarges the public sphere and shrinks the private one. And black hats require the private sphere to exist and thrive. More light = more success for the ethical players.”

The news is filled with stories of businesses who have tried to manipulate online social and video networks and have received far more backlash from their efforts than they ever could have received from the initial efforts.

I believe that in today’s increasingly transparent business climate those that provide real honest value will win in the long run. What are your thoughts?

Wanna Be’s

by

I’ve been entrepreneurial my entire life, but have had various levels of success. The more successful you are the more you are hounded by “wann be’s” to find out the “the secret.” But most of them really don’t want to hear the real answer. We’ll discuss that in another post for today I want to line out the different types of “wann be’s.”

1. Lottery Wanna Bes

They watch all of the “Rich and Famous” shows and dream of living like the stars. But do nothing to move themselves towards their dreams except to complain about their jobs and talk about winning the lottery to solve all of their problems. It won’t, it’s been shown over and over that even if they win they’ll be broke in 3-5 years.

2. Late night Wanna Be’s

The next big group buys all of the late night infomercial products and other “how to get rich by selling programs to people like you” programs. Then they allow these books and programs to collect dust quite often without even cracking the cover. Studies have shown that 90% never make it past the first chapter/tape/CD.

3. Meeting Wanna Be’s

These folks talk the walk. They make plans, they go to the meetings and talk big dreams but still don’t do anything with their new knowledge. We all know someone that has been through a dozen different Network marketing organizations, but never seems to do anything.

5. Perfect Wanna Be’s

This is the “paralysis by analysis syndrome.” These people are just afraid to commit. They just plan and plan and plan. A good example is guy who’s come to me a dozen times over the last 8-10 years talking about opening a hydroponics greenhouse. Every time he sees me he talks to me about his plans. How he could make so much money if somebody would just give him the $10 million that he needs to get started. When I ask him what he’s done to show that he’s the right person to run one of these he never has an answer. The conversation ends when I ask him how many years experience he has running a greenhouse and tell him that the 8 years of talking about it don’t count. Ironically I believe that it’s a good idea, but he has done nothing to prove that he really is committed to doing it..

6. Wrong system Wanna Be’s

These are the toughest to be annoyed with. I feel their pain because I’ve been right where they are. They actually are working. They are following the systems that they were taught. They are doing the affirmations, they are walking the talk. BUT they keep choosing the wrong system for their talents and abilities or they get to where they are almost over the hump and they listen to all of the voices of negativity that they are surrounded by and give up. I spent a lot of my time in this category. I tried MLM and gave up when I was probably 3 months away from being able to go full-time. I’m sure everyone who’s reading this has tried something online or offline to make money. For these wanna be’s the main thing to focus on is their own knowledge and skills. We are not all Yanik Silver, Perry Marshal or Dan Kennedy. We need to be honest with ourselves and take a real assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. Stay tuned to discover the process to discover your strengths.

Don’t be embarrassed if you see your self in one of these categories we’ve all been there. Now is the time to focus your energies. I’ll cover some good ways to find your calling in the next post.