How To Build a Thriving Business With Long-Term Thinking

ROCKY ULLAH

How To Build a Thriving Business With Long-Term Thinking

The farmer’s mindset, getting off the treadmill, and creating massive value with the juggernaut method

Last fall, I opened the door to a local convenience store, only to discover dozens of people wrapped around every aisle, like a conga line at a Chick-Fil-A grand opening.

I asked a lady stocking the shelves what all the ruckus was about. “You didn’t hear?” she replied. “The Powerball Jackpot broke $500 million.”

So that’s what all the commotion was about.

Did you know that just last year, Americans spent over 70 billion dollars on lottery tickets?

Yes, that’s billion with a B.

Pretty crazy, right?

The line inside the store was full of people with hope, desperate to defy the odds and be the one to purchase the winning ticket so they’d be able to live the life they desired.

A man near the counter summed it up for me as I paid for my gas: “Man, if I win this jackpot, I’ll never have to worry about anything again.”

And he wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d have a whopping tax bill to pay if he won, but even after taxes he wouldn’t have to worry about the things money can buy.

Of course, the likelihood of him winning was remote. Like infinitesimally small. He is 100 times more likely to be bitten by a shark, eaten by a bear, or get struck by lightning a dozen times in his lifetime than win the lottery. You’re 1,500 times more likely to die by getting hit by an asteroid than picking all six Powerball numbers correctly.

Successful Businesses Are Not Games of Chance

Unfortunately, the approach these people were taking towards their financial futures is how most entrepreneurs and business owners function on a daily basis within their own businesses.

They treat business ideas and “funnels” as lottery tickets, hoping that they will hit the jackpot overnight. In desperation, these individuals try to come up with any idea to make money quick, identifying some random technique, selling it, and hoping for the best — knowing full well they probably wouldn’t even buy the product themselves.

They do this despite knowing that the chances of hitting the “business lottery” are slim to none. When their scheme fails — and overnight schemes almost always do — they quickly scrap the idea and jump to the next one.

I’m not blaming them. Running a business and being an entrepreneur is hard work. Stress, depression, and uncertainty make them more prone to take desperate measures, and therefore more susceptible to falling victim to this perpetual cycle.

What they don’t realize is that even if they hit that jackpot business idea and got rich overnight, the results would be short-lived for their business. That’s because their mentality is about making money instead of building a sustainable business model.

But the truth is that there’s no such thing as “easy money” in business, and even in the rare instances when we do stumble across “easy money,” it doesn’t last for long.

This explains the bizarre fact that lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy than the average American. And the same thing happens when we approach our business with a Lottery Mindset.

The Farmer’s Mindset

But here’s the good news: As entrepreneurs, we don’t have to rely on luck or a game of chance to live the life we want. Instead, we can play a game of certainty.

We can create something that lasts; something that produces money that lasts. A business that makes enough money and allows us to live life on our terms.

By our terms, I mean waking up when we want, doing what we want, traveling when we want, etc. We can set our schedule and work when we want, for how long we want, and still have enough to live a comfortable existence.

To do that though, we have to ditch the Lottery Mindset and adopt the Farmer Mindset.

Let’s start by pointing out the obvious. Farmers work hard. They have to plant the seeds and nurture the crops before they get to enjoy their harvest. But they are not afraid to work hard now so that months later they reap what they sow.

But there’s more to the Farmer’s Mindset than just delayed gratification. When the crops don’t grow, farmers don’t plow them under and start again. They identify what’s happening and solve the problem. If weeds are encroaching their crops, they pull them out by the roots. If there are too many plants and not enough nutrients in the soil, they either thin the crop or add compost to the soil. And they never, ever let bugs persist.

When we bring this mindset into building a business, we build a business that lasts, one that allows us to live life on our terms. We focus on the end product and eliminate the distractions that keep us from our goal. We don’t abandon the farm at the first sign of adversity, but persist and problem-solve, trusting in our know-how and experience to help us find the way. We even consult other farmers and experts to discover the best methods.

This is certain, though: it takes time. It takes hard work. It takes persistence and patience.

But — when done right — it’s totally worth it. Come harvest time, you get to see the plants you tended come to fruition. And best of all, you save the seeds to plant for next year’s crop, creating a sustainable model that will last for years, even generations.

That’s because it doesn’t rely on a game of chance.

How to Become a Farmer

Our lives and businesses are no crapshoots, and if you’re reading this, I suspect you’re done with the sweepstakes mentality.

So let’s start treating our businesses accordingly. Let’s build a long-term future that will last.

Let me be clear: I’m no lottery winner, and I’m not writing this to give you a guide for picking the right numbers. If you’re looking for that, you’ve turned to the wrong person. What I can offer is expertise and insight into the Farmer’s Mindset.

I’ve been smart enough to earn a full-time decent living online for nearly a decade — even in today’s market, when it seems like everyone else’s online business is disintegrating faster than a tooth in a cup of soda.

I’ve done a few things right and made plenty of mistakes along the way, so I’ve seen a lot of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But I’ve been fortunate enough to build my own successful business from scratch and partner in several others. And I did this entirely on my own: no handouts, no loans, and no investments from anyone else. And as a result, I got to keep 100% of the fruits of my labors.

Today I want to share with you my favorite tool on the farm. It’s something I call The Juggernaut Method, and it’s a guaranteed way to increase your crop yield — upping your squeeze page results, sales page numbers, upsell rates and business income across the board.

But first, let me be up front with you about one kind of farming “expert” you should avoid at all costs.

Marketers Are Manipulators Pulling Your Strings

I was chatting with a good friend of mine who runs one of the largest online shopping carts for online businesses.

He gets to see, for almost everyone in the online farming community, how much money they make — even the big-time farming operations.

“Most of the ‘gurus’ aren’t making what they say,” he confessed. “And people that say they’re getting rich from them are even bigger liars.”

Because we both respect and value client privacy, names of the guilty were never discussed. But he was pointing out that this isn’t an isolated phenomenon. More than anybody I know, he has seen many accounts created that never reap a single penny.

I know what you’re thinking: “But [insert savvy marketing guru name here] promised that I would make millions practically overnight.”

I’m really not exaggerating. The other day I saw an ad about a “New Secret Funnel Strategy” that could take any business to seven figures overnight. That must be one amazing farmer, I thought, so curious, I clicked on the link and here’s what it took me to:

The countdown clock is a nice touch — your crops in the field might perish in precisely 9 minutes and 40 seconds unless you sprinkle magic fairy dust on them now.

The Magic Fairy Dust Club

What’s scary about this is the “proof” used to validate this concept may not even be true. Could these same “gurus” that promise these results actually be paying people to say they received those results — in order to boost their own authority and acumen (and boost the guru’s reputation as well)?

In other words, could desperate Lottery Minded entrepreneurs be paying the guru to give them an award that says they grew crops worth a million dollars (the two comma club) in order to lend their business credibility (and simultaneously improve that of the farming expert as well)?

It’s funny how things work, because in farming there’s a simple test to find out if you’re successful. You walk out to the field to see how your crops are doing.

And when I took a look at the businesses that the marketing gurus were improving through their magic fairy dust, all I saw were empty fields.

Shortly after seeing the page above, I saw this thread conveniently pop up on my Facebook timeline…

Is this the same two comma club the “guru” promised I could be part of practically overnight by following this New “Secret” Funnel Hack?

In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini blasts businesses that exploit consumers and profit from the mindless and mechanical nature of shortcuts like these. But farming “experts” like the guru above have taken their trickery to an entirely new level:

BONUS #3: Keyword Research Guide To Growth

Did you know that the easy way to grow a presence online was to know how to research keywords properly?

I’ll reveal my secret keyword research secrets that will allow you to get more views faster and give you the ability to grow your audience faster.

The story becomes quite different, however, should a compliance practitioner try to stimulate a shortcut response by giving us a fraudulent signal for it. The enemy is the advertiser who seeks to create an image of popularity of toothpaste by, say, constructing a series of staged “unrehearsed-interview” commercials in which an array of actors posing as ordinary citizens praise the product. Here, where the evidence of popularity is counterfeit, we, the principle of social proof, and our shortcut response to it, are all being exploited.

In other words, it’s a conspiracy perpetrated against start-up farmers worried about keeping up with the competition, when the competition isn’t the real farm next door but the fear of (in reality) a non-existent one.

The Reality Club

I know that sounds really harsh, so let me confess something. If I’m being completely honest, I would have to admit that I personally have nothing against this type of marketing per se.

My philosophy is pretty well summed up in the words of Don Vito Corleone during his conversation with Sollozo in the first Godfather film:

“It doesn’t make any difference to me what a man does for a living, understand? But your business… is a little dangerous.”

In his book, Trust Me I’m Lying, Ryan Holiday exposes bloggers, journalists, and news outlets for being media manipulators, feeding us deceptive content for their own personal gain.

Of course, not all of them are like this, but if you look closely it can seem like the majority of them are doing some shady stuff. At the very least the majority of internet marketers (in my view) fall into this category of media manipulators. They think this is the best way to make money.

And they might be right. P.T. Barnum wasn’t far off the mark when he said: “there’s a sucker born every minute.” He just didn’t have the benefit of the internet to let him know that the exact amount of time is every nine minutes and forty seconds.

Now let me be clear: selling lottery tickets to desperate people in the form of a new secret funnel hack isn’t exactly my cup of tea. I’m a farmer, not a huckster.

But here’s the thing…

Even if investing in something like that works for you, the results are short-lived.

As soon as a platform like Facebook makes a change that turns your magic fairy dust “hack” into sand (and it’s no secret they make changes all the time), your crops will die and you will go out of business.

Meaning you’re back at square one: no farm, no crops, and no foreseeable harvest.

And for the majority of the people the hack doesn’t work for (and we’re talking about the 99.9%), they’re stuck like the lottery hopefuls, holding tickets that have expired and looking around for the next huckster to sell them sand, promising it will help them grow their dreams.

Getting off the Treadmill

If you want the truth, there’s a name for these confused, desperate, depressed, and stressed individuals all waiting for the NEXT “New Secret Funnel hack.”

They’re called addicts.

It’s a sad and predictable cycle that Lottery Minded entrepreneurs suffer through, while the marketing gurus manipulating them stuff their pockets and tummies feeding on their desperation.

But I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to be a victim.

There’s another way. A better way. And a way that leads with empathy and builds a long-term strategy.

A way that doesn’t see get rich quick schemes and making money as the bottom line, but one that creates genuine value with your prospects and customers’ success first in mind.

It takes hard work and time to build a business this way, but it’s far better than playing a game of roulette with your business and future.

To grow your business like a farmer requires a different mindset. You have to plant the seeds, nurture the crops, and be patient enough to allow them to grow.

That last point is critical.

Here’s the thing the average farmer understands: sometimes crops take longer to grow than expected.

It could be due to lack of sun, lack of water, bad weather, bad soil, just to name a few factors.

But here’s the thing: farmers make their money by solving these problems and remaining patient. They can’t just jump to another farm because their crops aren’t growing.

They can’t plow their crops under in the middle of summer and expect that they can grow something in time for the fall.

And they sure as hell don’t have time to buy a lottery ticket either. They’re too focused on the development of their farm.

Business works in such a similar way it’s scary. But unfortunately, the average business owner doesn’t think like the average farmer does.

Think Like a Farmer

The secret to a long-lasting business is sticking to one idea or market (farm), nurturing the different aspects (crops) within that business, and giving them time to grow.

Not sitting by watching them grow either. I’ve never met a farmer who didn’t have dirt under their fingernails. They’re tending their fields every day to ensure that they have a harvest come fall.

Nurturing a business — like a farm — takes daily consistent hard work.

Have you ever driven by a farm in the summer and been amazed at the amount and size of the crops? It’s easy to be impressed without even considering the work put in to achieve it.

Melons are grown up and down Japan and they’re serious business. In May 2019, two melons from Hokkaido sold at auction for 5 million yen, that’s just over $45,000. So what is it that makes this fruit so expensive? These melons cost thousands of dollars in Japan because of how meticulous the farmers are with growing their crops.

But that’s how people will look at your business when you build it the right way. And that takes time. You plant in the spring, tend to your crops all summer long, and only in the fall are the crops ready to be harvested.

So that begs the question: How do you properly nurture your business?

It starts by not being lottery minded. Not swinging for a home run on the first pitch. Not relying only on the Hail Mary to score the touchdown. And instead of treating your business like a real business, by investing in long term success with your time, money, effort, and energy.

I’m about to reveal to you what I think is an essential tool to have on your farm. But only by adopting the Farmer’s Mindset can you utilize powerful farming tools like the Juggernaut Method to nurture your crops.

The Juggernaut Method: How It Works

The Juggernaut Method can be applied to any traffic source that originates from valuable content, whether it’s Facebook Organic, Ads, Blog, YouTube, LinkedIn — truly anywhere that valuable traffic originates.

What it does is segment your prospects by interest — allowing you to make specific and relevant offers to the leads you’re generating.

Now we all know that specificity and relevance sell. Instead of pissing off your prospects by flooding them with options, you must cater to their specific needs if you want to turn them into customers.

Remember, this is not a get rich quick method, and it takes hard work. But once you start tilling your field with this technique, I promise you that your business and future will be in much better shape.

And as you can probably tell by now, I don’t operate like a media manipulator. I’m simply here to rescue you from the same problems I wish someone had rescued me from when I was first getting started.

Of course, that’s exactly what they say, right? So here’s a little background on the Juggernaut Method that hopefully shows you that I’m not a fly by night operation.

The Juggernaut Method: Operation Manual

Making money online is simple. I know people try to complicate it. But in its essence, here’s what you need to do:

Find people who need your help. Help them. Get them on your email list by incentivizing them with real value. Give them more great value and recommend products to them. Or in other words:

Traffic ➔ Leads ➔ Sales

Most people “think” they know and understand this, so I won’t waste too much time on the basics. I’ll just say for now that there’s quite a lot that everyone could learn about the basics to improve their results, but that’s a story for another day…

Like most people trying to nurture a business, before I developed the Juggernaut Method I would simply send all of my traffic (from different sources and ideas) to the same squeeze page.

For example, one of the businesses I run is a basketball training business. What I did was send all my traffic (from YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, plus paid traffic) to a “free workout to help them score more points.”

I thought that was what the market wanted, and I was wasn’t wrong. I did get some business, and if my numbers weren’t rosy they were at least respectable. This squeeze page was converting at 55% (i.e. 55% of the people who clicked it would submit their emails):

Not bad, right? But I knew it could get better.

Because in pursuing a “one size fits all” philosophy, not only was I leaving leads and sales on the table (which was bad enough), I was also doing a disservice to the people I wanted to help by not providing them with content specifically suited to their needs.

Over time, I began to learn about specificity and how important it was to match your content with your squeeze page, your offer, and your end user content. Because the more specific I could get, the better everything would convert.

In other words, the leads I was generating may have been interested in a “scoring” workout (which is fine), but that didn’t necessarily mean they were a qualified prospect and would eventually become a buyer.

But then I took the Juggernaut Method out of the barn and started tilling my fields with it, and the results were fantastic. I applied this concept to our content and created specific squeeze pages and free offers for each of the specific interests within my market:

Ball Handling
Scoring
Vertical Jump

And so on.

Instead of sending all my content to the same basketball offer, I created these squeeze pages:

By sending traffic to separate squeeze pages based on the specific content they’d seen, I was segmenting the traffic and sending visitors to offers that related specifically to them. The pages looked nothing like each other, ensuring that even if the same person had different needs, they saw that I was offering unique content and not merely recycling the same stuff regardless of their interest.

The Juggernaut Method in the Field

Here’s one unique way you can implement the Juggernaut Method at your farm.

Facebook allows you to create Custom Audiences based on people that have watched a certain percentage of a video. This allows you to upload different types of videos, boost them to your audience, and create a custom audience based on people that have watched that video. These are people who have self-selected the topic, have displayed genuine interest in learning more about it, and are primed for your message.

Facebook’s Custom Audiences allows you to run specific ads to those specific people that match up with the specific topic discussed in the video. Those ads would lead them to a squeeze page that correlated with the content.

Still with me?

Great!

Because here’s when things got crazy… crazy good.

The Juggernaut Method really took off at my farm when I realized the exact same concept can be applied to autoresponders and sales funnels in general.

Even though I had divided my squeeze pages and improved conversions and offering different free gifts, I was still funneling everyone to the same exact autoresponder and product. In other words, I was so focused on the Traffic and Leads side of the equation that I forgot about Sales (unbelievable but true).

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to explain the massive drop in my conversion rate despite the huge increase in interest in my product. What was worse, though, was the huge disconnect I was creating for my customers who originally signed up for a free “shooting/ball-handling/basketball moves” gift.

After all, they had come to expect tailored materials. I had given them a free example of what they wanted. If a farmer gives you a free apple and you like the crunch and the way it feels in your hand, you’re bound to be disappointed when you buy a bushel and get bland applesauce instead.

So I shut down business for a week and went to work to create and install Free Gifts, Autoresponders, and Front End Product Offers that were 100% in congruence with the main topic my initial content piece was targeting.

By offering them a free gift relevant to their interest that was valuable, easy to digest, and instantly gratifying, I started building value and trust with the new prospect. And then by having an autoresponder 100% dedicated to that topic, with an introductory product in place based on solving that particular problem, I saw a massive increase in conversion across the board.

Here’s what some of this looks like on the inside of Infusionsoft:

As you can see, each different lead source goes into the proper follow-up series.

And that follow-up series features content and offers based on the topic they initially signed up for.

That is the Juggernaut Method in a nutshell.

Why It Works Flawlessly

Instead of hoping to hit the jackpot of a customer buying something they don’t actually want or need — and then going bankrupt as they spread the word that you’re a huckster to their friend networks — the Juggernaut Method delivers on what it promises.

The key is a seamless web of connectivity between interest and product, subdivided based on the specific topic of interest. With this system, there is no delay or time for the potential customer to cool off the topic they had originally been interested in.

For example, here’s a segment of what a follow-up email could look like:

In this Welcome Email, after we introduce ourselves and deliver the content and the free training we promise, we recommend our training system for people that really want to up their ability in that particular subject area.

We always make recommendations and don’t engage in overheated high-pressure sales tactics. Instead of forcing it down the audience’s throat, I always let them know that the choice is theirs. In fact, I make it clear that they are going to get our free content — the ingredients if you will — for achieving what they want, but if they want the recipe to get better results faster, they need to purchase my program where I walk them through the step-by-step process to get the results they want.

So let’s review the sequence of events on your farm that leads to the harvest:

A prospect searches and finds you through a piece of content you create, whether paid or organic.
They watch the video or read the article and click on the call to action to get their free gift.
They opt-in and are segmented as a new prospect that is interested in that topic.
You recommend them the best offer available on that topic.
If they don’t become customers, follow up with relevant content and information that continues to help them as you continue to recommend your offer as the best solution.

Do you see the power of the Juggernaut Method?

The offers and communications are 100% driven by their interest. That equals happy prospects, customers, and huge conversion rates.

Put the Juggernaut Method to work and you’ll see instant increases in:

Squeeze Page Conversions
Email Open Rates
Sales Page Conversions
Upsell Conversions
Business Income

But the genius of this particular tool is that The Juggernaut Method is customizable to work on any sized farm. It doesn’t matter if you sell online or physical products or even if you have a service-based business. So long as you tend your crops at each step of development, you’re guaranteed a bountiful harvest whether you’re growing potatoes or peaches.

Wrapping up

The key takeaway of the Farmer Mentality is keeping your eye on the end goal: a bountiful harvest. Instead of thinking about the money you’ll make, think about the content you create. Deliver the right crops to those who want them the most and you’ll solve 99% of the problems you’re encountering on the farm.